like to call this meeting to order. Thank you all for coming out on this chilly night. Um before we start this meeting, I do want to acknowledge um our fantastic facilities crew, transportation department for getting our school and school grounds ready for
today and tomorrow. All right. All right. Pursuant to the Open Meeting Act, chapter 231 PL1 1975, adequate notice as defi defined by section 3D of chapter 231 PL 1975 has been made by regular mail or email on
the 11th day of January 2026 from the board of education offices maintained at 1014 group 601 Skilman, New Jersey to the following. The Courier News, Montgomery News, McGomery Township Clerk, and the Rocky Hill Burough Clerk. The board reserves the right to enter into executive session during all
meetings of the board of education. It is the school board's intention to conclude this meeting no later than 900 p.m. Roll call, please. Mr. Kelly, >> Dr. Wang Steff here. Spina >> present. >> Mr. Herman, Morland, >> present.
>> Mr. Harris, Mr. Nunes, >> present. Mr. Snor, >> present. >> Mr. Todd, >> present. Thank you. We have a Please rise as we salute the flag. Ice to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it
stands one nation under God indivisible and justice for all. >> We do not have our student representative in attendance tonight. So we move right to superintendent reports and presentations. Superintendent. >> Good evening everyone. I'll keep my
comments short because we have a lot of presentations tonight, but I just want to echo with what President Todd said. And thank you to everyone, all of our facilities crew, our transportation crew, all of our staff, you know, for shoveling themselves out and getting in
today to make it a uh nice, healthy, warm day for the kids. Um, more snow ahead in the forecast, but we're take it day by day. And uh thank you everyone for all of your patience um with all of the snow days and delayed openings. And please pay mind to the district
calendar. We used our second emergency contingency day. So moving forward, we will be going into spring break. Tonight is a very special night. As you can see, we even have refreshments. And it's to celebrate our governor educators of the year. The New Jersey Department
of Education recognizes the outstanding contributions of teachers, educational service professionals, and leaders through various national and state programs. Each year, these honored educators serve as spokespersons, and ambassadors for the profession who are encouraged to help shape New Jersey
educational policies and practices that influence their schools and classrooms. Tonight, we honor our Montgomery Township School District Governor Educators of the Year for 2026. So, I'm going to begin with Mr. Jan Van Heis, who's the principal at Orchard Hill Elementary School, to present to us his
educators of the year. Don't need this on anymore. I forgot. Hi. Good evening, everybody. Board members, Superintendent Mccclaclin, um everybody out in the audience. I am very excited to be here tonight to honor a
couple of amazing staff me members from our early childhood center. They both have in common our prek building. So very excited to um nod towards our ECC tonight. Christa Alisandre, Montgomery
alum and preschool teacher extraordinaire, has taught with us here for the last five years. All five of those years, she has brought the energy for if you're going to teach preschool, you better have a battery that never reaches empty.
You drop by her room and she, her amazing par profofessional of 4 and 1/2 years, Miss Richie and her students are always in the middle of something. As you can imagine, there's not much downtime in their world because, and you
can nod with me, downtime with three and four year olds spells trouble. She also brings the creativity. Her nominations speak to her unwavering commitment to student engagement through creative, hands-on instructional activities that
all of our ECC cubs benefit from. Miss Alisandre frequently thinks outside the box to meet the needs of students in her class and can always be counted on to integrate social emotional learning into her teaching through the use of consistent language tied to
expectations, emotions, and following Orchard Hills Cubcore values. Her classroom chill zone is the perfect example of this as students of such a young age know how and when to use it appropriately to help them take a needed
breath and reset. Miss Alisandre takes on additional leadership roles within the school, formerly serving as the preschool's team leader, but also taking it upon herself to help coordinate special events such as the ECC's Fall Fest and our schoolwide Autism
Acceptance Month. Christa, a big thank you for coming with positive vibes and 100% in the tank every single day. It's with a great enthusiasm that Orchard Hill names you our Governor's Educator
of the Year. Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. That's it. Everybody give her a smile. >> Thank you. >> I realized halfway through that some years we've done having the recipient come stand next to us. Apparently, I
started without that this year. So, other principles, if you want to change that up on me, that's okay with me. Um, next, Jen Rogers, school social worker, is a long time Hill staff member, spending the past 26 years here
supporting our students and families. Her nominations highlight her advocacy for student well-being and growth, as well as her dedication to the Montgomery community throughout her tenure in the district. Miss Rogers works closely with
parents to ensure that they understand many of the educational and legal parameters that guide special education in the state of New Jersey. Her approach is always truthful and consistent and she strives for collaborative
partnerships across the board. Having recently worked out of our early childhood center, Jen has served as a leader and guide to families and staff from the ECC. In addition to her daily responsibilities, school administration
counts on her knowledge and expertise when it comes to important programming decisions involving our preschool cubs, as well as some of the logistical challenges that arise when navigating multiple buildings on one campus. When
we shifted to a full day kindergarten program and moved our preschoolers next door to the ECC, one of the factors we did not need to worry about was who was going to lead over there. Jen has the respect of her colleagues and has played
a large role in the warm and playful culture that is felt inside our ECC on a daily basis. Jen, we thank you for your years of service to the Montgomery community, your ability to do your job with devotion and class, and we
congratulate you on being named this year's Orchard Hill Educational Service Professional of the Year. Merry Christmas. Just learned that. >> All right. And I sensing that we're going to go up the grades here. We'll turn things over to Miss Susan Lacy from
Village. >> Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Mary. Good evening, board members, community members, and guests who are here this evening. I am very excited to recognize the two educators of the year at Village Elementary School. Having been here 26
years, I have seen them grow into the amazing people that they are. Having known them since they first got to this district and still being able to work with them now has really been a pleasure for me. So, first I would like to introduce Valerie Hung. You could choose to come up here, stay there, wait,
whatever your choice. Val, come on. So, I'm proud to speak to you about Miss Valerie Hump, Village Elementary School's teacher of the year. For 22 years, Valerie has served at the at served the students and families of Montgomery Township with unwavering dedication, extraordinary skill, and a
heart for teaching that inspires everyone around her. Over the years, Valerie has excelled in her role as a fourth grade teacher, having served the needs of both special education and general education students. As a thoughtful and reflective learner, she is constantly seeking new ways to reach
young learners. Universal design for learning principles and smallroup instruction are seamlessly incorporated in her classroom and her math workshop model is a masterclass in engagement and differentiation. Valerie is deeply committed to her students personal growth and she creates
a learning environment where every learner feels valued, supported, and capable of success. Valerie's expertise extends well beyond her classroom. As a trusted expert in the teaching of mathematics, she plays a meaningful role alongside supervisors and curriculum development using her
deep knowledge of the standards, educational research and best practices to support highquality instruction. She is also a resource for colleagues on the use of digital platforms and has led professional development on effective technology integration. Her leadership and compassion also have a profound
impact on village school and the wider community. For nine years, she has served as a peer partner adviser. Those are our fourth grade leaders who help spread the word of kindness and community service. And she's developed those student leaders to promote our pillars of character and coordinate all
of our community initiatives. This includes supporting this year's 31st annual Young Scholars Institute holiday drive, an effort that brings the entire school community together to support program participants who are in Mercer County. In every space she enters,
Valerie makes our school stronger, kinder, and better. Valerie is the teacher colleagues appreciate, students adore, and families trust. She is innovative, generous with her time and knowledge, and endlessly committed to learning and growing. She
embodies the very best of what it means to be an educator. Mrs. Hardornne, who is a teaching partner of hers, they share now 46 kids or so. um she helped me survey her students and
they think you're great because and there there were a lot of comments. I'm going to summarize some key ideas. They think you're great because she teaches in a way that is easy to understand. Her lessons truly stick in our minds. She is kind, patient, and always willing to
explain things step by step, sometimes more than once, so no one feels left behind. She makes learning fun, which was the most common thing that we heard. Most importantly, she encourage encourages us, builds our confidence, and helps us believe in ourselves.
Here are the reasons they believe you deserve to be the teacher of the year. She just does. She is really smart, kind, respectful, caring, focused, and very funny. She is an epic teacher, nice and amazing with
7,000 exclamation marks. She treats us fair and square. She has guided us through all our learning experiences and has been a friendly presence in our lives. She takes good care of everyone and always looks out for us, especially if we are stuck on a question. She's
just fun to be with. She helps people like the peer partners and she helps with our supply drives that help the community. She is a dedicated and inspiring teacher. Valerie, on behalf of your students and your village school family, I am excited to recognize you as
our governor's teacher of the year. Our next recipient is Mrs. Lauren Fel. It is with great pleasure that I recognize Mrs. Lauren Fau, Village Schools Educational Services Professional of the Year. Lauren is a highly respected school counselor and advocate for children and she has served
at Village School for the past 20 years. Thoughtful and wise, Lauren brings compassion and purpose to her work. Her dedication and commitment to supporting the growth and well-being of every student has had a positive and lasting impact on her school and district community. She collaboratively
facilitates a truly exceptional counseling program with her counselor's partner Jolene Shants at VES and effortless effortlessly builds rapport to ensure that every child feels safe, comfortable, and accepted. Students trust her deeply because she knows how
to give them exactly what they need. Whether it's a listening ear, tools to build their confidence, or activities to help navigate friendships and social situations, Lauren consults regularly with all members of our school community. She asks essential questions, collects academic and performance data,
and ensures that student supports are developed with the team. Lauren's leadership is far-reaching in her role as an anti-bullying specialist. She creates student, staff, and parent volunteer training programs to build and maintain a positive school climate. She leads the school safety and climate
committee and serves on the school safety care team and attendance committee. She has previously served on leadership teams and the district strategic planning committee. She designed Mindful Moments, a series of mindful activities for teachers and their students. She has also facilitated
professional development and co-hosted parent education events with members of the counseling department. A model for creativity and innovation, Lauren developed an emotional regulation toolbox for students, a resource she hopes to publish, and she designed the Bluebird Buddies curriculum, which
empowers students to serve as peer mediators during recess. Lauren's commitment to the social, emotional, and academic success of every child and her contributions to our school community over the years are impressive, impactful, and very much appreciated by families and especially her students who
say, "She is cool and she is funny. I love when I come into her room. She always gives me a warm, nice greeting and asks about my life. She is the sweetest. I feel like I can tell her anything. She is open and kind. She really cares about
our feelings. I love how completely honest she is and if we disagree, she respects me in my opinion. She is so kind and she makes my day a lot. And I do want to say anytime I'm in a meeting with Lauren and she's talking
to parents and talking to kids, I always say to her like that was exquisite. Like she doesn't leave a stone left unturned and everybody feels really well taken care of and she comes up with the best solutions that kids and families need. So on behalf of the village school family, thank you Lauren for always making our day. We are excited to
recognize you as our educational service professional of the year. >> Cy, why don't you come up too? >> Mr. Delgado, >> it's your department, too. It's summer. Wait, come back.
I think he's taller than me. Let's go. >> And so now I'll pass it on to Lisa Romano, principal of the lower middle school. Thank you. Good evening everybody. It is with great pride and heartfelt conviction that we
recognize Miss Jen Romano as our teacher of the year. For 20 years, Jen has served the Montgomery Township School District with extraordinary dedication, compassion, and professional excellence.
She is a deeply respected and beloved member of our school community, cherished by students, families, and colleagues alike, and her impact on our culture is both profound and enduring. As a special education teacher, Jen's
belief in her students is unwavering. Through her expertise and quiet persistent, Jen empowers students to find their voice, develop independence, and take pride in who they are as learners and as people. Jen's influence extends far beyond her
classroom. She is a tireless advocate for inclusion and belonging and a leader in our unified schools efforts through initiatives such as unified home room, unified afterchool club, reverse inclusion and special Olympics. Jen and
her team of teachers have helped remove barriers, shift mindsets, and build authentic connections among students of all abilities. Following a safety care training Jen facilitated last year, a veteran teacher of over 25 years wrote the following
email to her. Just wanted to say thank you for yesterday's training. You did a great job. Very thorough and informative. I know we haven't worked together much over the years, but I was so impressed with your knowledge and and experience. I have always had much
respect for the work you and others do daily for our students. My admiration and genuine respect for your expertise and professionalism is only greater after yesterday. Thank you so much for all you do. Have a great weekend. You
know, you too has a famous song entitled Angel of Harlem, a tribute to Billy Holiday that reflects how despite the many challenges in her life, what she gave to the world through her art made everyone's lives better. In that same vein, at LMS, Jen extends grace to every
student, every colleague, and every community member she encounters. In every interaction, she conveys that her relationship with you truly matters to her and that she feels genuinely grateful to know you. This is why time
and time again as I stand outside watching the buses pull away, carrying our students back to their safe and welcoming homes, I see one of Jen's students place one foot on the steps of the bus, pause, twist around, jump down, and run back into Jen's arms for one
last embrace, seeking to reconnect with that sense of grace for one more heartwarming time before heading home. This is why at LMS, Jen Romano is our angel of lower middle school. To call her an outstanding teacher is simply not
enough. Jen is a rare and remarkable force for good in her life's work truly changes lives. It is without surprise and with great admiration that all of us at LMS and our Montgomery Township community recognize Jen Romano as our
2025 2026 teacher of the year. touch. Thank you. Okay, now moving right along to recognizing our astute educational services professional of the year, Mr. Kevin Armstrong.
For 22 years, our district has been extraordinarily fortunate to call Kevin one of our own. Kevin began his career as a social studies teacher at Upper Middle School where he quickly became known for his professionalism, dedication, and ability to connect
meaningfully with young people. For the past 15 years, Montgomery Lower Middle School has had the tremendous privilege of having Kevin serve as both our guidance counselor and our anti-bullying specialist. Roles in which he continues to shine with exceptional skill,
compassion, and integrity. Time and time again, our team looks to Kevin as a model. We often ask ourselves, "What would Kevin do?" As we guide students back to class after a challenging moment, we draw on Kevin's example, how he restores calm, how he
reinforces student agency and how he ensures each child returns to class feeling in control and ready to move forward with their day. In his role as anti-bullying specialist, Kevin demonstrates tremendous poise and empathy. He supports students through
difficult reflections, particularly when they're processing mistakes that can feel overwhelming. With great foresight, Kevin prepares students for the moment they return to class, coaching them on what they might say if a peer asks, "Where were you?" or "Why were you in the office?" This thoughtful guidance
protects a student's dignity while empowering them to take ownership of their actions. In this way, Kevin turns every misstep into a learning opportunity, ensuring that students see themselves not through the lens of a mistake, but through the possibilities
of who they can become. Kevin is also a vital leader on our MTSS team. In addition to his deep understanding of how students learn and grow, Kevin recognizes the importance of joy, shared experiences, and lasting
memories in a child's school journey. and he leads the planning of meaningful schoolwide events such as egg camp, spirit weeks, and the week of respect. Kevin serves as a steady and trusted bridge between home and school. He communicates with families with empathy,
clarity, and professionalism. Parents consistently express gratitude for Kevin's guidance and the comfort they feel knowing he is supporting their child. Within our school community, Kevin is truly a pillar. He is a stabilizing force that elevates the
entire climate of LMS. Kevin is a committed professional of the highest caliber, demonstrating ready for this in part by his perfect attendance record last year. Kevin consistently shows up. He's ready to serve, ready to listen, and ready to give the very best of
himself to our students and staff and community. And so it is with great admiration that all of us at LMS and our Montgomery Township community honor Kevin Armstrong as the 2025 2026 LMS educational services professional of the
year. Thank you. >> Oh, I >> I got it. Lisa, it's good. >> And now, Mr. Marco Carney, you are >> Thank you. Good evening, Superintendent McLaclin, board of education guests and our
honores. It is with great enthusiasm that I stand here at this podium to introduce the rockar of S, Mr. Drew Disco. It is with great pride that I get to announce him as our teacher of the
year from cuz he was my first hire as an administrator in our building. Mr. Dr. Drew Dysto has been a world history teacher at Since September 2022. From the moment he arrived, he brought
that special magic right into his classroom and our school community. Mr. Tisto is widely known for his engaging lessons, dynamic lessons, things that are bringing world history to life for our seventh graders, which is not very
easy. We are competing with big things like Tik Tok and Instagram. But he does it whether through escape the room style challenges in class or sometimes in the stairwell art museums or other creative learning experiences. He takes this work
and ensures our students are engaged in the history. They see the themes and the trends that various cultures have gone through and help them understand their role in our current standing. Beyond his work in the classroom, Mr.
Tisto has quickly become an essential contributor to many school activities. He plays a key role in our RISE mentoring program. He regularly will risk his life to chaperone middle school dances. Not an easy task, but he is
there and he is there guiding our traffic at night, keeping everybody safe to ensure everyone returns home safely. And for that, I thank you. He supports our athletic programs by coaching cross country and taking over the intram mural flag football team. Mr.
Tisto shows unwavering commitment to his students by cheering them on inside of school and outside of school. He is there at their performances. He is there at every game. He is there at our afterchool events. His dedication and
enthusiasm and genuine care only add to the amazing community that S is. When I spoke with some of his students that nominated him, he to sum it up, they said, "When you walk into Mr. Disto's room, you know that you matter." And for
all of you, you know that's what counts at. So, it is with great pride that I introduce Mr. Drew Dysto as our teacher of the year. Alrighty. Um, it is also with great enthusiasm that I get to announce our educational support personnel of the
year. Unfortunately, she is not able to be here tonight, but I would like all those families that use the parent drop off and parent pickup to big to give a big congratulations to Miss Sandy Ajamian, the power professional of S, who was awarded educator support
personnel of the year. All right. Now, I'm going to pass it over to our school principal, Miss Heather Pino. >> Good evening everyone and congratulations to all of our honores tonight.
>> So, the question is, do I make them stand next to me or not? I guess the better question is, do I want to go to work tomorrow and not have flat tires? So, I'm going to start with our governor's educator of the year. And it is with great admiration and profound
pride that I am honored to introduce Miss Jane Heapner, our chemistry teacher at Montgomery High School since 2010. Since joining our community, Jane has been a driving force in helping students discover the excitement of learning, guiding them not only to understand chemistry, but also
to grow into competent, curious, and capable individuals. She brings an extra extraordinary blend of knowledge, creativity, and empathy to her teaching. Her lessons are thoughtfully designed, deeply rooted in pedigogy, and tailored to student interests. They strike the
critical balance where engagement meets meaningful learning, creating experiences that students remember long after they leave the classroom. Jane is a firm believer in inquirybased learning, encouraging students to ask questions, explore ideas, and take ownership of their discoveries. She sets
high standards for every student while ensuring those expectations are achievable, helping each learner succeed and feel capable. She has the rare ability to find the good and the beauty in every moment, every experiment, and every student. helping them see themselves as capable and valued.
One of Jane's signature lessons is the famous combustion lab, where students explore chemical reactions that literally and figuratively ignite their love of learning in a moment of wonder and discovery where curiosity, critical thinking, and joy come together.
Jane even allows me to participate each year. I need to admit to all of you, I am her most challenging student. And Jane, I'm sorry that I break the test tubes every year. These labs are more than demonstrations. They are carefully
designed experiences that spark imagination, reinforce scientific principles, and leave students in inspired, energized, and excited about the possibilities of learning. Jane's impact reaches far beyond the classroom. She takes a genuine interest in her students as individuals, attending
extracurricular events, supporting clubs, and celebrating their successes in every aspect of school life. Students often return to her years after leaving the classroom, sharing how her encouragement, belief in them, and mentorship have shaped who they've become. She nurtures confidence,
curiosity, and resilience, making every student feel seen, respected, and capable of reaching their full potential. Jane is also a mentor to her colleagues, always stepping up to share her expertise, offer guidance, and create opportunities for professional growth. She models excellence in teaching while fostering collaborative
environments where educators feel supported, inspired, and encouraged to grow together. Her influence also extends beyond our school walls. She's an engaged member of our broader community, using her knowledge, passion, and creativity to make a positive impact wherever she can in Montgomery and
beyond. She brings the same care and dedication she shows her students to every interaction outside the classroom, inspiring learning, curiosity, and connection among all who have had the privilege to work with her and know her. Jane's dedication, passion, and intellect have touched the lives of
countless students and colleagues. Her lessons ignite curiosity. Her mentorship creates comp confidence and her belief in every student inspires them to reach higher. Her work reflects the very best of education and it's a privilege to celebrate the extraordinary difference
she makes every day. Jame. OKAY. I really do break all the test tubes. It's embarrassing. Now, it's my greatest honor to introduce Dr. Stacy Delish, the MHS Governor's Educational Services Professional of the
Year. Since joining Montgomery High School, our community in 2002, Dr. Delbridge has been a steady source of strength, compassion, and expertise for our students and staff. As the co-creator and district-wide clinical coordinator
of STAR, she has redefined the way we approach student well-being being. The program reflects her belief in the power of connection, emotional awareness, and supportive relationship, and it continues to influence the way we care for students every day. Dr. Dr. Delbridge's professional foundation is
impressive. Her years on the child study team and her specialized training in cognitive behavioral therapy, trauma-informed care, dialectical behavior therapy, and crisis response give her a rare depth of knowledge. She partners closely with staff to elevate student needs, offers thoughtful psych
psychoeducational psycho education tailored to individual situations, and leads meaningful professional learning across the building and district. colleagues consistently look to her for clarity, guidance, and sound judgment, which which speaks to the trust she has built in every corner of our community.
What makes Stacy extraordinary extends far be beyond her credentials. Her impact lives in the countless conversations, quiet moments, and thoughtful interventions she has offered over more than 20 years. She has long been a champion for strengthening mental health supports in our schools, well
before these conversations became as prominent as they are today. Her work through both the child study team and STAR reflects a commitment to ensuring that every student feels valued, heard, and supported as they navigate their challenges and their greatest joys. One of Stacy's greatest gifts is her ability
to build meaningful relationships with students from every walk of life. She creates spaces where students feel seen and understood, no matter of their background or lived experience. Because of the trust she builds, students return to her year after year, long after graduation. They come back to share
their accomplishments, their struggles, and the ways in which her guidance has shaped who they are becoming. These relationships are living proof of the depth of her influence and the lasting imprint she leaves on the young people she supports. Her impact reaches adults as profoundly as it reaches students.
Stacy has helped shape the growth of so many colleagues by modeling compassion, steady leadership, and a genuine respect for the people around her. I can say personally and with full support of many others that she has played an essential role essential role in my development as
a leader as well. Her thoughtful perspective and her generosity have helped guide how we care for students and how we show up for one another. She literally has helped build the foundation of every classroom in our building. Dr. Delbridge's contributions have changed the landscape of our
community in ways that will resonate longing to the future. Her ability to build trusting relationships with young people paired with her commitment to creating spaces where students feel safe and supported has shaped STAR into a vital resource and a defining part of our school. She has strengthened the
systems around us, improved the culture within our walls, and has made a profound difference in the lives of so many. This recognition is both overdue and incredibly welldeserved. And now I present to you Dr. Stacy Delbridge. CONGRATULATIONS.
That concludes this presentation. So, we're going to take about a 15-minute break to enjoy and celebrate our educators of the year and enjoy some refreshments. Our
next presentation tonight is from our board attorney, Mr. Vic Laapira. He's going to be doing board training on HIV. >> Okay. All right. Thank you very much. I don't know if I can follow that act where we got to hear lots of great
teachers and and great educational support professionals, but I will do my best. starting off in a weird way, but uh so we're going to talk about once we get the presentation back up, we're going to talk about the uh anti-bullying bill of rights act, HIV. Um kind of what you
need to know uh not only as board members, we have the public here too. So that's great. Um so what we'll talk about is we've I've been doing this presentation or some form of it probably for I don't know 15 16 years or so. And as the years go on, there are more cases
decided by the commissioner of education, sometimes by the health division. Um, so we get more information about what it means when we talk about HIV, what is HIV, what isn't. Um, often times what we see is uh confusion
between code of conduct and HIV. So we'll talk about that here today. So um, the actual definition I didn't put up there. It's 100 words. That's how you know I've learned my lawyers. Um, this is a more abbreviated version of it. So,
all of these things have to be met in order for it to be HIV. You could have inappropriate conduct that meets some, but not all of these, and it could be a code of conduct violation, but in order for it to be HIV, has to meet all of these prompts. So, number one, there has
to be some kind of act. Um, it has to be a written, verbal, physical act, electronic communication. Uh, but something has to happen. Um, it can't be non-action, right? Like this person didn't say anything in my defense.
That's not an act. Um, or uh they gave me a dirty look. I don't know that a look is an act, right? It hasn't quite been tested yet, but it has to be something, right? Usually, we have it. That's usually the least of our problems. Um, the act has to occur on school property, on a school bus, at a
school sponsored function, or on or off school grounds if there's some type of nexus. We'll talk about that a little bit more later. And we're going to go into some of these in more detail as well. It has to be reasonably perceived as being motivated by an actual perceived characteristic or some other
distinguishing characteristic of the student. We'll talk more about that. It also has to substantially disrupt or interfere with either the orderly operation of the school or the rights of other students. In the beginning, this I think was the area that tripped up
school districts the most or that parents maybe didn't understand or students didn't understand, but we now have over 15 years of case law that really talks about this. So, we'll get into that a little bit more as well. So, all those things must be met and one of the next three. So either a reasonable
person should know that it's going to physically or emotionally harm a student or damage a student's property or put the student in fear of those things or it insults or demeans a student. This is almost always met, but it has to be one of these three. Or it creates a hostile
educational environment by interfering with the student's education or by severely or pervasively causing physical or emotional harm to a student. We don't see that one as much, but uh certainly the one in the middle, insulting or demeaning a student, we see that a lot.
Now, we talked about reasonably perceived. Um it doesn't have to be actually motivated by a characteristic of the victim. The question is, did either the victim or witnesses, does a
reasonable person believe that's what's motivating this conduct, right? um if the answer is yes, you know that that it's reasonably pursued questions isn't reasonable. Um and it has to be motivated by one of these things. So what you will see on the left are what
what are categories what we refer to as protected classes under the law against discrimination. New Jersey specifically prohibits discrimination or harassment based upon these types of things. And that made its way into the anti-bullying bill of rights act. So those are the things that we normally think about.
Race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, uh gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, or some mental, physical, or sensory disability. The only thing that's in the law against discrimination that we do not see in there is age.
Could it be based upon age? Sure, we could see a scenario in which maybe a group of seniors are bullying freshmen because they are freshmen. that could theoretically be motivated by age but it's not specifically enumerated and then it could be any other distinguishing characteristic which has
to be some type of objective characteristic right so we give examples of like physical appearance those are types of things that that might be distinguishing characteristics um it's not about relative characteristics and what I mean by that
is we say well you know let's say we have the biggest kid in school who is shaking down another kid for their lunch money right Uh that's like classic bullying. Sure. But why is it happening? Right? And they say, "Well, it's obviously because this kid is it's the difference of strength, right? This kid
is strong and and the biggest kid." Well, what if the kid he's bullying is the second biggest kid in school, right? It's not that's that's a relative thing as opposed to if someone is picking on someone because they are, you know, perhaps they're a little person or
something like that. They're objectively smaller than everybody else. that could be uh something that would be distinguished character. So it's not relative. It's about something that we look at objectively and we say yeah okay that's why it's happening. Now we're going to give some examples of this. I give uh what I characterize like as a
trigger warning right to the extent that sometimes we review cases as examples that help us understand and almost all these cases are going to involve people uh mostly students hating badly and doing or saying bad things. So but we're all adults here right? We have any kids here? Kids if you see up stuff up there do not do it. Right? You're not supposed
to do that stuff. So um all right so first thing this was um fifth grade kid uh the allegation was that this the child was committing an act of hip he touched a female's private parts twice while sitting in the hallway. It
happened. There was no question that it happened. The question was was it reasonably perceived as being motivated by this student's gender? Um, and the parents argued that the student had a disability, including his inability to
regulate his behaviors, and that kept him from fully understanding his actions. So, I want to focus here on the fact that what would a reasonable person believe? Was it motivated by the fact that he was touching this young lady's
private parts? Right? I think a reasonable person would believe that he was sexually harassing or sexually assaulting this young lady. Um whether or not that was his intention, whether or not he fully understood that it was
wrong was separate apart from that. They may that may factor into the ultimate discipline that is imposed upon the student, but it doesn't factor into whether or not the conduct was motivated by that distinguishing characteristic. So the actual motivation or actual
intent not required. The other thing I'm going to say too is we don't always know what the actual motivation or intent is. We're not mind readers. We can't know what was uh motivating. Um and I will tell you that when asked uh almost all students say, "Well, that's not why I did it." Um so they're not usually going
to be candid about that anyway. Uh and in terms of the uh the substantial disruption here, this particular student was scared, was reluctant to attend school, didn't want to be participating in a group activity. This definitely interfered with her rights, right? So no
question about that. Um where that term substantial disruption interference comes from very briefly, there was a case in the 60s, Tinker versus Deoy. Kids wore black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. school district wanted to discipline them because they felt it was inappropriate. That went to the US
Supreme Court and they said you absolutely cannot do that. There's no evidence of any actual disruption, substantial disruption to the operation of the school. They have a first amendment right. Um that's where this kind of comes in. That's it. It all
comes from that case. Even though it's a different issue, it's a first amendment issue. That's the history of it. Um, so in this particular case, I'm going to kind of summarize. We had an eighth grade boy on a bus who was constantly um
making inappropriate comments to this 7th grade girl and asking her to do inappropriate things. Um, all of which constituted sexual harassment, right? They were lewd. They were indecent. They were offensive. In this Bridgewater case, it was 2014. It was for the first time that they really delved into the
concept of what is a substantial disruption because the parents were trying to argue well it wasn't that much of a disruption. I mean this was happening over a period of time. It was totally appropriate. Um and what they found was is that you know kids have the
right to be secure and to be let alone. And the fact of the matter was is that this constant and frequent um action had so affected this young lady that she didn't want to ride the bus so forth and so on. It was inappropriate. Um and it definitely constituted harassment,
intimidation, and bullying. But this was the first case where they really analyzed that specific uh piece. This totally inappropriate stuff, but you know, a a kid was um repeatedly saying Kool-Aid to his classmate who was black. They proceed, the victim proceeded to be
directed at him because of his race. That wasn't really the question. But the question here was, was there a substantial disruption or interference? The student left a sporting event early, which was not common. Um, the student, as it turned out, was biracial. His mother was black. He asked his mother,
"Maybe you maybe you shouldn't come to the school concert." I mean, really terrible how this student was affected by it. He was embarrassed. He was uncomfortable. He wasn't fully available for learning. That's going to be a substantial disruption interference. Now, there's not a case that is in here, but it's a case that I think is a
contrast to this one. Uh there was a case involving a bunch of fifth grade girls. They were on a group chat. They decided that they were going to some of them said, "Well, let's let's pull a prank on these other girls in the group chat, so we'll argue and make believe we're mad at each other. We're not going to tell everybody else." Listen, I don't
understand the three girls. And I did it then and I don't now, but they were doing this and it was supposedly fun. I don't know why they were doing that and you know once someone was clued in on it then then they started doing it and eventually it someone got really angry about it and then put the nword in the
chat and that ended everything right. Um that happened like on a weekend Monday morning comes the parent reported it and they said okay we'll investigate it. They interviewed the kid and this case got appealed. Uh I went to the administrative law judge went to the commissioner went to the appellet division. They all said the same thing
cuz they found it wasn't a hit. They said the conduct and the word is totally inappropriate. It's intolerable. It's not permissible. Um could be a code of condonic violation. Fine. But was there substantial disruption or interference? When they asked the young girl about it,
they described her as being totally non plus about it. Her attitude was basically, oh yeah, that was so, you know, that was really a jerk thing to do and I thought she was a better friend than that. And that was it. She didn't miss any school. She didn't have any problems. So, so you can have conduct
that's really inappropriate. That doesn't mean that it's it really depends upon how um it it affected people. And again, a single act can be harassment, intimidation, or bullying. But usually we think of things that are
pretty significant. Um more frequently when we think of harassment, intimidation, or bullying, it's usually something that's happening over time. Um it could be a single act. So things that we look for when we talk about substantial disruption or interference, we look at the students grades. We look at whether or not they said, "I want to be moved to a different class." Or if
they're trying to avoid going somewhere, let's say there's some bullying happens in the lunchroom and the kid starts eating lunch somewhere else instead of going to the lunchroom. Those are the typical things. I mean, rarely, but it could happen that you know, kids have physical manifestations um or that it causes disorder in the
learning environment that has happened. Um so those are the things that we look at. uh it's different in that part from being upset in the moment and then you know like 15 minutes later they're fine, right? So that's that's a distinction
here. Um where it can occur usually it's going to be on school grounds. If it's going to be conduct away from school grounds, which is actually where most of the cyber bullying takes place, there's a heightened standard. It has to be something that is necessary, reasonably necessary for the physical or
emotional safety and security and well-being of the student or of other students or staff or school property. Um, and it has to materially substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of school. So, it's got to be something significant. It's not
necessarily just um people being mean or teasing someone or whatever the case may be. something that kind of what I'm going to characterize as bleeds into the school. Um, and something that if we get disciplined for, it's going to cause problems within the school. Uh, and it has to be has to be necessary for us to
impose that discipline to protect the health, safety, and security of the students. So, that's when we think about that. In terms of timelines, I'm going to go through this very briefly, but this is upon receipt of reliable information of a of a hit. So, if um if
a staff member receives information, they believe that this is I'm going to say that this is likely to be a hit, right? Um they report it. Now, if we see something and we're not sure if it's hit or not, you know, you report it as a potential code of conduct violation, it doesn't necessarily automatically get reported as a hit, right? I mean, if if
if we have no reason to believe that the motivation was based upon distinguishing characteristic, we don't have to report all of those things. We say, "Oh, you know, this this kid punched the other kid and they have we have no idea why that happened, but it was a code of conduct violation." We report that. If a couple days later we find out, well, you
know, this happened because um he was saying, "I'm going to do this to you because of your sexual orientation or because of your religion or whatever and we get that information. Oh, okay. Maybe now we are going to follow through this as a following HIP 384." So when we have information that a
staff member believes is HIP verbally must be reported the same day to the school principal. The principal is then going to turn around and inform parents keeping a record of all that. The HIP 338 form must be filled out within two school days. And the principal might make a preliminary determination at that
point whether to investigate or not investigate depending upon whether or not if we accept everything in the report is true. Is it could it be a hit or if not then we don't need to investigate. Um if we do investigate we start within one school day of the report has to be done within 10 school
days. Once that's done it gets reported to the superintendent within two school days after it's done. Now sometimes for reasons that are unusual. Maybe a kid is out of school um for a period of time and we can't get them within 10 school days. We still have to issue at least a
preliminary report within 10 school days. We can always amend it, but we've got to get it done within 10 school days. Once the superintendent determines what, if any, additional discipline is going to be imposed or services or counseling, then it gets reported to the board. The board hears about it. And and what that means when I say the board
hears about, it's different in every different school district. It could be a presentation in the executive session. It could be an email um summarizing the HIPS. It could be, you know, something that's in a Google Drive or a Google doc. So long as the board has the opportunity to review it and ask
questions at the next meeting, um they need to hear about it. Once the board hears about it, then the superintendent tells all the students who are involved, you know, the victim or alleged victim and the offender or alleged offender. The parents get notice within five school days after the board hears about
it of, hey, this is what was determined. If you want to appeal it, you can appeal it. So forth and so on. At the next meeting, regardless of whether the parents appeal or don't appeal, the board is going to affirm, reject, or modify the decision. Um, the parents might appeal before that, they might appeal after that. They can ultimately
appeal. If the parents are dissatisfied with it, they can always appeal to the commissioner of education. So, that's the the general process. So, now we're going to talk about the case law and things that uh people shouldn't be doing and whether they were him or not him. So, uh this first one, so this is about
a lunch, right? Um, now to be clear, uh, the victim always has to be a student, right? The offender could be anybody. So, the allegation is that this lunchon bullied this kid by making her sit by herself at lunch, missed recess for doing nothing wrong, and cry. Okay, that
actually wasn't true, but that was the allegation. When they asked, "Well, what is the reason? Like, what's the distinguishing characteristic?" The mom said, "Well, you know, I have beef with this person. We we've had a we have this personal history. Now, they don't say what the personal history is. I don't know. Did the Lanche steal this latest
boyfriend? You know, did are they like really like difficult? Like is one person a Yankees fan, one person a Red Sox fan? We don't know what it is, but there was some beef between the people and they did the investigation and they found that, you know, whatever happened happened and maybe the kid was violating
school rules and so they did stay in from recess uh one or more times. The district handled it the way they were supposed to handle it. they actually said to the age like you know what why don't you work with other kids just just to avoid the fact that you know you have this history with the parent but um but
ultimately it wasn't hit right even if the conduct was wrong it still wasn't hitting the parent appealed and the commissioner said look you didn't identify distinguishing characteristic of the student that motivated the behavior even if it's true that she was
targeting your child because you guys have this personal history, it's still not a hit. That might result in employment consequences to the AIDS. It's totally inappropriate, but not necessarily a hit. So, that's one thing. It's got to be a distinguishing characteristic of the student. Um, so in
this particular case, we had a kid who was homeschooled for many years. Uh, then came to fifth grade. Mom said that he was being repeatedly taunted and kicked in the private area by his classmates. And the reason was that he was good at math and science and also
because quote they know that he was national math kangaroo champion two years in a row. This is the first time I knew that you could be a national math kangaroo champion and I don't know if we have one here in Montgomery but you know get to work on that folks. Um so in this
particular case they conducted a lot of interviews. They they talked to all sorts of people. They could not find any evidence that any of these things happened. So it was ultimately determined to be inconclusive. They couldn't find it. There were some procedural violations
here because they didn't necessarily adhere to the timelines. Part of it may have been the parent who kept amending the information. So they did kind of get a slap on the wrist for that, but ultimately it didn't violate the student's due process rights. It didn't invalidate the findings, right? It's not
like, well, because you didn't adhere to the timelines, now I'm going to get a decision that it was a hit. No, it's still determined. It's still based upon the merits, right? It's not a technical violation. Um, so in this particular case, it was reviewed by the commissioner. The commissioner said, "Look, there's no evidence that this was
that the board acted dishonestly or in bad faith. It was a difficult situation. You have to weigh it." Um, you know, they judged based upon the credibility of witnesses here. There were no witnesses who were identified who could support the kid's claims. that was okay as it should be. Um I mean the standard
is whether or not the board's decision was arbitrary, capriccious or unreasonable. And that's usually pretty hard to overturn it. Not not member, but hard to overturn. In this particular case, kid made inappropriate comment about allegedly about a student based upon a student's skin color. They
investigated the kid actually wasn't even in school that day. So maybe it wasn't March 30th, maybe it was a different day. Um, the parents also brought up various other things that went back to 2019. So, the board didn't interview anybody about those. They just focused on what
happened in 2023. And they said it was inconclusive. They couldn't find any evidence that it happened. Parent appealed. Ultimately appealed by saying, "Well, you also didn't investigate the 2019 claims." So, the board won on the claims about what
happened on March 30th, 23. They said, "Yeah, there that decision was not arbitrary, pretty unreasonable." The board tried to say, "Well, you have to appeal within 90 days, and these things go back, you know, 4 years, so they're too late." And the commissioner said,
"Well, it's 90 days from when you guys issue a decision, and you never interviewed it, so you never issued a decision, so they can't have blown the timeline." So the upshot of that is that when parents are making old claims uh
depending upon those circumstances you might use the principles determination to say well even if these things are true they still can't be a hib or you might investigate them and you know what who knows what you're going to find it's four years ago my guess is you're five or six kids I have no idea what you're talking about or if they all say oh yeah
we remember that that was horrible well maybe that was a hit right I mean so we we have to at least uh check off the boxes there at a minimum to make sure that you know we're investigating those claims. Um so this was a case where you
know Snapchat uh sometimes uh the bane of our existence I think um they had a thread on Snapchat or some kind of thing in Snapchat whatever it was where they were mocking a young lady based upon her appearance based upon her weight or sexual orientation. Really nasty. She
wasn't part of this thread. A kid who was part of it shared it with the school staff. The victim finds out about it. She's really upset. She's crying. She's anxious. She doesn't want to go to high school now with these same kids. She's in eighth grade because of everything that happened. This kid who reported it
also was getting enough flack and experiencing distress that she signed herself out of school because she didn't want to go to high school with these kids. So, you know, the conduct was inappropriate. It was bad. All of that stuff was met. They did an full investigation. A lot of kids got suspended. One of the kids who got a
six-day suspension appealed it. And his argument was, well, this violates my first amendment right. And what he said was that there was this case in 2021 US Supreme Court. There were two young ladies who were in uh I think freshman
high school. They were at a quick check or the equivalent in Pennsylvania, whatever it is. And um they were upset about things involving the school. So, they took a picture of themselves flipping the bird and they said in the picture that they posted to Snapchat or Instagram, whatever it was, uh, F
school, F volleyball or uh, whatever, uh, f the, you know, some other sport, I forget what it was now, a cheerleading and f everything, right? You know, which sometimes we feel that way, but you can't put it out on social media. So, it got back to the school. The school
wanted to suspend them, but the problem was it didn't cause a substantial disruption. If we go back to Tinker versus De Moines, they talked about it for 5 minutes during a math class. That's not a substantial disruption, right? I mean, that was something insignificant. They couldn't discipline for that. So, this person said, "Well,
you can't discipline me. Look at look at that case from uh Mahanoi Area School District versus BL." So, what I always tell people is read all the way to the end, right? uh because the Supreme Court specifically said it it does violate the
students first amendment rights but doesn't if for example it was targeting a member of the school community and constituted harassment, intimidation or bullying. It's like they it's like they read, you know, 99% of the case and didn't read the last uh percent there. So that was not a significant that was
not a valid defense. They couldn't do that. It did substantially disrupt and interfere with the orderly operation of the school. It interfere with these kids' rights. that was totally appropriate for them to find him and to discipline. Uh in this particular case, more
inappropriate conduct. Um here the com the claim was that the the investigation was insufficient. And what happened was they did an investigation, but they didn't interview every single kid in the hallway. These kids were walking down the hallway, someone hears them use the
n-word. The kids initially denied it and one kid said, "Oh, no. I didn't say anything. That was Johnny saying, "Move, move, move." So, they did the investigation. They didn't find the kids were credible. The board heard it. The parents put up other things and said, "You didn't interview everybody." They
remanded it back to the superintendent and said, "Superendant, you do the investigation." Superintendent the investigation. Then, uh, the story changed and they said, "Uh, well, it wasn't Johnny that said anything, but I said, "Move, Nikki, move." But that's all that I said, which was probably
closer to what the kid actually said, but wasn't actually what he said. They didn't find that it was believable. Um, you know, they saw, there's no audio, but they saw the video and they saw that, you know, the girls walking and then she whips her head around and starts like yelling at someone. So, they figured, yeah, we think that it did
happen. And, and of course, the person that was standing right next to her also said that it happened. The parents would complain, you didn't interview all 30 kids in the hallway. You don't have to. we just have to interview a couple of kids. We make a determination as to whether or not um it's reasonable. There were written statements. There were interview notes. There was all this
information. They said that's a sufficient investigation. It's not arbitrary, capriccious or unreasonable. So um that's important to know there. So sometimes we see this thing happen. Um this I mean the the facts are not super important. the there was an
allegation that a teacher made a kid read an engine without brakes and somehow they said that was being done because he has ADHD and we're bullying my kid based upon his disability. I that that I don't know where that came from but that is not what happened. They
assigned the the story to everybody. They never talked about the kid's disability or anything like that. The parent said, "Well, I'm not letting you interview my child." So that's not a thing. that's like a legal right. Um, in
this particular case, um, Raywood said, "Fine, we won't interview your kid. Who's the victim? We'll interview everybody else." And they interviewed everybody else and they found that it was inconclusive. The parent then challenged it and one of the things she complained about was that I guess that they didn't interview her child, which
she wouldn't let happen, right? So ultimately what they said was look had they been allowed to interview your child maybe they would have come to the conclusion that this was reasonably perceived as being motivated by the child's ADHD or maybe they would have concluded that um it did substantially
interfere with this student's rights but you didn't let it happen and they had to base their determination based upon the information they had. So, this was upheld. Um, but I I do bring it up because um we do see in some school districts from time to time they say, "Well, you can't interview my student."
Usually, it's not the victim, usually it's the alleged offender or I have to be present. Those things are all like not legally supportable. Um, you can only imagine if every time a child violated a school rule and we had to investigate, if we had to wait until the
parent came to be present for an interview, I don't know what else you would get done all day long. Um, but that's not a right that people have. That's not a thing I like to say. So you, uh, school administrator stand in local apprentice. You can interview your kids. You don't even have to call the parents before to do the interviews. You
can just let them know that it happened. Um, but in certain places, people have different feelings about that. Those feelings are not the law. Um, and so, uh, that's that's totally appropriate to do. In terms of retaliation, our national math kangaroo champion came back again in this case. Um, and in this
particular case, he was trying to get kids in trouble. Um, and then like used the hip allegations as like a way of getting the kids in trouble. So, he would go up to them and ask if they want to play Jenga. They didn't want to play Jenga. Then he would say, "Oh, well, they're not playing with me because of
my disability or whatever it was." Um, the important thing here is that there's two things. Number one, we can't retaliate against people for filing a HIP claim, right? That's inappropriate. But you also can't use it as a means of
retaliation in and of itself. So that's in your HIP policy. Um, valid HIP claims of course are totally fine. Even if it turns out that's not true, it's fine. But like actively using it to get kids in trouble, that's not appropriate. And
and that wasn't uh acceptable here. Again, when we talk about the actual intent or motivation, uh this actually happened here. Um this was a student that was uh using inappropriate language. Um in this particular case, the student had a 504 plan. He felt that
the allegations that were being made against him were, you know, based upon his disability. He was embarrassed. Um not necessarily accessible for learning. So there were two defenses here, both of which never work. The first defense was, well, you didn't think about his actual
intent. He didn't know that it would be offensive. I challenge that and say that yes, you do know that that term is going to be offensive. Um, so that to me isn't particularly credible. The other thing was they said, well, um, the the victim was stabbing my child with a pencil or
poking him and that's why he did it. So, two wrongs don't make a right. Um, and that's not appropriate. That's not a valid defense. Ultimately, this was upheld. We don't have to look at actual motivation. how did they reasonably perceive it? Other people thought that it was he was making these comments
based upon the students disability and that was acceptable. Um in now slightly differently here at Long Hill, this was a teacher who did not have his best day at work. I'm going to say um he was teaching kids. They were playing the
recorder. This young lady played the recorder wrong. The teacher was frustrated and was correcting her and said, "I'm trying not to lose my temper." And then he was talking to another student and he called that other student by a different name. And so this young girl said, "Uh, that's not his name. You should call her by his real
name." And I'm trying not to lose my tender with you. So that's sassy. Fine. But she's a child and you're an adult, right? But this teacher got angry. They got into a loud argument. She tries to return to her seat. She grabs her by the arm. Have you lost your mind? Totally inappropriate. Not his best day as a
teacher. Right? Um the parents felt a good claim. They said the reason he did this is because of my child's disability which is ADHD. So was there substantial disruption to the students rights? Yes. Did it meet all the other criteria to hit? Yes. Was it reasonably perceived as being
motivated by distinguishing characteristics? No. Why? Because nobody knows that this child has ADHD. It was a secret, right? She was not We didn't know that she was on We they didn't know that she was on medication. Um uh the the student didn't have an IEP. the student have didn't have a 504 plan.
There was nothing that tied it to that. It was reasonably perceived that the teacher lost his school, but it was because of the way that the student was being, I guess, disrespectful to him, not because of the student's disability. So, a little bit different from the last case, right? But there could be a
situation where while the actual intent doesn't matter, it has to be reasonable that it happened in that way, right? um just inappropriate comments uh about height and religion here. The student wasn't fully available for learning. The
parent tried to claim that they made a lot of errors during the investigation. He also said that this inappropriate statement, which they called the kid a Jewish monkey, they said, "Well, there's an Israeli rock band called the Jewish Monkeys, and that's what my child meant." Okay, not believable, but fine.
Um, ultimately the question was, um, what was reasonable here? Was it reasonably believed that they were saying that because the student was Jewish, not because they were referring to an Israeli rock band? Yes, that was reasonable. And this was upheld. They
did not find that the investigation was inappropriate, nor did they find that the decision was arbitrary. The priest is unreasonable. So, that's that one. Um, this one, this is a man Olive case. seeing that's important to know here is that inappropriate comment clearly, you know, should have been reported for
reasons that aren't clear to me. It just wasn't reported for several days. Just want to reaffirm if a staff member has a reason to believe that there has been a hit that's been committed, has to be reported verbally the same day and the HIP 33A form has to be filled out within
two days. We can't just pass it off on to the parent in that situation. Um in in the end the finding was affirmed um but they were noted for not complying with the contracts. Um this is another
one here uh students um calling uh the student acoustic. They were using that term in place of autistic saying that's sub acoustic or whatever it is not appropriate. Um the anti-bullying specialist investigated it found that it
was a hip. There were various questions that were raised about various aspects of where it took place and um some of the allegations at the end. The important thing here is that the bur unlike the special ed case for example where the burden is on the school district to prove that it's IP is
appropriate. Here the burden is on the parent. So the parent made a lot of allegations but they don't ultimately were not sustained. Right? They have the burden. And when we talk about arbitrary compreh is there room for two opinions and you know two reasonable people one person
might say yeah I think it's bully and the other person says no I don't think it is. If that's the case that's going to be upheld because that's not arbitrary capricious or unreasonable. Arbitrary capric or unreasonable is like when we're flipping a coin or or we're deciding like well there's been too many
hit cases. I don't want to have 10 hit findings. So this I'm just going to make this one not a HIP. Well, that's that's totally arbitrary or cooperation. So that's not appropriate. But here, if two reasonable minds could disagree whether it's HIP or not HID, that's almost always going to be affirmed uh if that's
appealed. This case is not to me, I don't know, not super interesting in the sense that I we have it in here just to know that sometimes you can get summary decision on these cases. You don't need to actually have testimony. In this case, the board tried to get summary decision. the parents opposed it and for
some reason the judge got confused and granted it on behalf of the parent who didn't file a motion for summary decision. Ultimately the board went to the commissioner on that one. The commissioner said no there's too many facts that are contested here. This actually has to go to a hearing. One of
the things was was there was there substantial disruption or interference. That's a common one. Anyway, that's the summary. That's my dog Lance. His questions are can I have more treats? Um if people want more treats, there are some over there. But um does anybody have any questions for me about Kevin?
Ju >> just going back to the the nexus to school point. Could you just go over that a little bit more? I think sometimes especially in this age of social media, you know, you have sleepovers and >> something happens and it's uh video, you know, shot on iPhone and it gets passed
around. So can you go into that a little bit more? >> Absolutely. Yeah. So, um, what we really want to analyze when we're looking at conduct away from school grounds is the impact that it has on the school and is it really necessary to protect the health, safety, and well-being of
students. So, I'm going to give an example outside the context of HI, but just to kind of illustrate when we have a student who we find got arrested for possession of CVS conduct, you know, away from school grounds. it happened on Saturday night, whatever. Um, whatever
they had on them, inappropriate, you can't have that stuff on you. Um, they get arrested. That's not going to be enough to discipline a kid uh in school if there's no connection. Contrast that with we have a kid who gets arrested for possession of CDS. He
also has a scale. He also has 50 little glass bags. Um, he also has like $500 of cash in his pocket, right? and he gets possessed for not he gets arrested for possession with intent to distribute. Right? That's the kind of thing that we can discipline for because
where are his customers going to be? They're probably going to be in the school. It's reasonably necessary for us to discipline that student in order to protect the other kids in the school. So in the context of hib when we look at that um is is the action of such a
nature and again with social media sometimes the stuff it gets spread through the school sometimes it's not necessarily the person who who did the h who spreads it but that's kind of inherent in putting stuff on social media right I mean you know you kind of
have to live with the consequences of your action you can't tell I didn't know that that was going to spread throughout the school well why didn't you know that Um, so if we think that it's important to discipline because it's either going to well, it's going to be both. It's going to interfere with the operation of
the school if we don't discipline the student, but also if it's important to make sure that we're protecting the the health and the safety mental health well-being of the students. Um, yes, then it can. A lot of times it's going to depend upon the severity. It's going
to depend upon how far it spreads. Um, if it was something that was just minor that happened, like, you know, kids are getting into a disagreement at a soccer game and one kid yells something totally inappropriate at a rec soccer game against the other kid and that's it.
Probably not. No, I don't think so. Um, but something that kind of spreads and becomes a big deal, yeah, that's likely going to then come into the the ability for us to discipline for that. And again, a lot of it too is also going to depend upon how significantly it's
affecting the student. Um, or it could be a group of students too because it could be something that's totally inappropriate and maybe the the vict the direct victim wasn't so upset, but maybe the whole community is or the whole school community is outraged about it. That could happen too and that could be
a valid basis. >> Hi Vic, I have a question. So um when we as board members uh evaluate the HIV review the HIV cases you know monthly >> what tips would you recommend to us um
you know to make sure the recommendations is kind of consistent >> right so the way that I because we represent a lot of different school districts what I always try to have folks focus on is um as you're looking through the report um is Is there
anything that like if you look at it, you just say, "Well, this this doesn't match up, right?" Like I I'm looking at all of the prongs and I'm I'm feeling like this one right here, I'm not understanding why it's not met or whatever. Those are valid questions I
think to ask and to review. Um, a lot of times I will I will say this, right? Because I think that you should also be looking at it as, you know, was the anti-bullying specialist decision here? Was that arbitrary or could unreasonable? Because and the thing that I would remind people is that the anti-bullying specialist who's doing the
interview is really the only person who can legitimately judge the credibility of those witnesses. Right? He or she is the person who did all the interviews. He or she can tell whether one person had a very consistent story and the other person didn't. or can tell whether
one person um was very open and the other person was somewhat ky or you know was acting in a way that made them seem like they were um you know not necessarily telling the truth. Maybe they maybe they caught them in a lie or maybe they were very fidgety and didn't want to answer questions. Whatever the
reason may be, you know, we leave it to them to make those determinations. Uh because it's very difficult for anyone other than the investigator to assess when there are credibility determinations. So, I feel like when there are credibility determinations, those are the ones that I I say we
shouldn't be challenging those, right? Um, if something looks off and we think that maybe, you know, maybe a step wasn't done or, you know, they didn't check off the boxes and, you know, sometimes I've seen that in different school districts where, you know, it says, "Yes, this is a HIP and I'm looking at the check boxes and the one
check box that isn't checked off is substantial disruption or interference." Uh, how could it be a HIP if that's not checked off, right? could be just an administrative error. Maybe there was one and the rest of their court substantiates that. Maybe there wasn't. So, those are the things that I try to focus on is to make sure, you know, did
the investigator make sure I mean, and I mean this not in a porative way, did they check off all the boxes? Did they did they do their job there? And and make sure that they um determined appropriately was it hip or not hit. If the question is well you know I don't know if I would have found that this I
don't think this is reasonable to perceive that this was being motivated by this characteristic or not those to me are so long as it's reasonably debatable I wouldn't really set those aside right in the end if the investigator
came to a conclusion and we sit there and we go well maybe if I investigated this I might have come to a different conclusion I wouldn't necessarily set that aside I think if we all say like I know how this investigator came to the conclusion that this was reasonable and everyone kind of collectively agrees with that which I think probably doesn't
happen very often but I mean uh but it could happen that's one that I think is worth review and and discussion um but generally speaking I think we should be looking at to make sure that we don't have anything that is being called a HI and that didn't meet all the prongs or
is or we say or someone said well this isn't HI but it does meet all the prongs I'm like why isn't it HI so I think those are the things that I would look at. But fun fundamentally, I think like in terms of the role of a board member, right? I mean, it's not to substitute ourselves for the anti-bullying
specialist, but just to make sure like are they doing the things that they're supposed to do? Is it clear to me even if I might have reached a different conclusion? Is it clear to me why they've reached their conclusion? That's the approach that I would take. >> Thank you. So, a basic takeaway message is have a quick check off list and just
make sure nothing was left. >> Yeah, absolutely. No, I think that's right. Yeah, >> I have a question. My question is regarding like is there any consistency on all the public schools how much reporting they have to do including the
agenda for public to see um is it for monthly? We don't do it in our district. So I was just wondering is there any rules regulations? >> Sure that's a good question. I um so what I would say is at a minimum what you have to do and this is what I would say most districts do at a minimum you
have to present a report I believe it's twice a a year and just talking about like the summary statistics and you know how many investigations we did how many findings there were you know kind of usually break them down by school and say how many were investigated that weren't hit how many were investigated
that were hit and you have to do that twice a year um I think that's technically part of the I don't remember off the top of my head if it's part of the the violence and vandalism report generally, but usually I see them around the same time. Um, and that's what I know that all school districts do. Um,
there may be some school districts that give a more frequent reporting that I would say is very much optional. Um, that's not something that's required by the law. Um, but the only thing I would be careful about because I've seen different school districts do different things is just to be cautious about how
much information we provide because sometimes we provide information that um people could look at it and they go, "Oh, okay." Well, you could look at, for example, if you indicated what level of discipline kids got for engaging in HIPP violations. Well, you know, especially if you kind
of indicate like what the what the violation was or what the general facts were or if you have like a student ID number or you say like where it happened, people can figure out who got disciplined and that's information that we don't give away, right? I mean, that's information that's part of the student record and it's confidential.
So, whenever someone says, well, uh, you know, my child was in a fight with so- and so or so and so assaulted my child. I want to know what discipline he received. We always say the same thing. We can't tell you what discipline they received. that's part of the student record. But what we can tell you is that we handled it appropriately and we're dealing with it and and you know when
appropriate we deal we give the appropriate schoolbased consequences um or counseling or whatever the case may be. So that's the only thing I would say whatever a board decides to put out there if it increases the frequency of it reporting or gives some additional detail. We just be careful about what
detail we provide because we don't want to violate any students rights. But yeah, you only you only have to do it twice a year. Yeah. >> Sorry that was I gave a super longwinded answer. I could have made it a lot shorter. Sorry. >> We are we have to do twice a year but if you want some schools may choose to do
more often. Correct. And in more detail and things like that. So it's all up to the district what they decide to do. >> That's right. >> Thank you. >> Sure. So they just follow up too is for example like the uh decision recommendation from each case um even at
the summary level you would not recommend to release that to public >> um >> so let's say 10 10 10 reported hi HIV to found and two the case uh you know the decision is suspension or consultation
we cannot even provide that >> I probably wouldn't provide the Um, I probably wouldn't provide by the um specific case, especially the hip. Sometimes we see like they have like the hip number listed. I mean, if if if I'm someone who was involved in that, I know
that hip number I can figure out who the other person was. So, I wouldn't put down what discipline was imposed or services. I mean, having general statements, um, especially like when you do like the, um, the the bannual reporting and talk about like how many investigations were done, that's fine.
But I think starting to get into on individual cases what level of discipline was imposed or whether counseling was provided or things like that that to me is where we start getting into the area where we could potentially identify students. And so I wouldn't want to do that. But um having
general um discussions indicating that yeah there were um this many investigations this many were confirmed and where they were confirmed appropriate levels of discipline were uh provided. That level of generality I think is fine. Um
getting a little more specific I think then starts to potentially cause problems. >> All right. Thank you. It was longer than I wanted it to be, but that seems like it always happens. My wife will tell you that all the time. But thank you. >> Thank you.
>> Our next and last presentation is on the strategic plan. Take it away. >> Are you up first? As they're pulling up the presentation, I can start. So, this is our share out of the progress of where we are in year
two of our five-year strategic plan. Our district goals are aligned with this strategic plan. There it is. So, where to locate information on the strategic plan? If you go under parents,
there's a subsection that says strategic plan and there's a whole section if you could look um the next page you would be able to see how you could uh click on all the information on the strategic plan right on our website
our website that was renovated and you'll hear about that as one of our progress. So goal one is our ste student experience. Goal two is communication, community engagement and outreach. Goal three is
culture and climate which is social emotional learning, cultural sensitivity, health and wellness and resilience. Take a minute to look at that. So goal one, I'm going to call in Borland who is the leader for goal one. Okay, so I have probably the most slides
to go through, but it is goal one and it is about teaching and learning and student achievement. So if you're a school district, that's something that we should do a lot of. So um forgive me for a lot of the slides that you're going to see for a moment, but we are a really busy goal team. Um so we have five different objectives. I'm going to
go through each objective in our goal and what we've done so far this year. So again, our first objective is to support personalized, diverse, and inclusive learning through comprehensive student advising. And so the first action that we have done this year is to gather,
review, and incorporate new resources that support universal access to learning. So, as you have heard from this podium so many times, universal designs for learning speaks to teachers being able to plan lessons at the curricular level that are ready for students to learn in different ways, at
different levels, providing access for all and as many students in their classroom as they can. Um, one of the things that we're doing this year is that we are moving this initiative that has been mostly supported by an external consulting firm. Um over the last few years we've been using IDE Corp,
innovative designs for education to be coaching our teachers, running workshops, um doing book studies, a myriad of different resources for us. And now this year they are really focusing on coaching our internal leadership so that we can take over um the you know the the continuation of
this work and that this work does not go away just because we don't have the consulting firm at that moment. Um, this looks like, just in case you're wondering what it looks like, it looks like our external consultant um, walking around with one of our supervisors or one of our building leaders going into classrooms observing educ observing
lessons and then spending time calibrating what would the feedback be, what does the language look like and really making sure that we are able to keep this work going. Um, there's also a UDL Google form available consistently for staff to share resources. So we want
when staff when staff create exemplar lessons, we want to gather them. This is their way to submit them. Um the teachers are asked to submit these types of lessons regularly at their department meetings or at their team meetings. Um and as we collect them, we add them to
our uh rub our rubicon app database so that teachers can access them and we have that as institutional knowledge. Okay. Continuing in objective one, we also um are engaging teams in curriculum development. We are reviewing curriculum documents and we are empowering students
to take an active role in their learning. So this year we have developed a timeline for articulation, curriculum work and formal Atlas Rubicon updates of stage three. So what stage three means to me and what everybody else needs to know, it's the actual teaching and
learning. So, as um as parents, you often see the what we're teaching and um how we're what we're using to teach, but stage three is where teachers go to access different ideas for their lessons and um really working to make that a as robust and as teacher friendly as possible. We are working with grade
level and PLC teams to gather, review, and incorporate these resources so that students can take an active role in their learning. This looks like students making choices. So when you go into a classroom, there might be a choice to attend a mini lesson or to get started
working with a peer or to um potentially read something as per per you know compared to viewing something. So there's just a lot of choices and helping students recognize the way that they learn best. Another aspect of objective one is that we are in the process of reviewing
course course offerings and schedules in comparable districts. This is being head head by or led by um JP Mavati and Adam Washowski and the amount of hours that they have put into this is profound. So they have collected 19 programs of
studies from comparable districts around the state. They have reviewed these programs of studies and documented the course offerings and they are currently in the process of analyzing the trends. So you should their their work is their they each have like a 5 inch binder for this work that they're doing. It's
pretty impressive. Okay, so objective two, moving on, to promote a connected, creative, experiential learning environment fostering real world connections within our curriculum. So our actions for this year were to identify areas of collaborative partnerships to increase
and and start community outreach and to incorporate purposeful community connections into the curriculum. Um, what I also want to differentiate here is that when we're talking about partnerships and community outreach, this is in direct relationship to our curriculum. We are profoundly lucky to
live in the kind of community that we live in. We have authors, we have astronauts, we have engineers, we have um, you know, we have teachers, we have safety people, we have people, we have entrepreneurs. And so it's really amazing that when we can bring in our resources to help our students really
understand what does learning look like in the real world. So at this point we have met with each cabinet. Cabinets are referred to our grade band teams. So all of the K4 administration works together as a K4 cabinet. All of the 58 and then all of the 912 directors we go to all
three um and and sit in where we can to be useful. Um and so we have worked with each cabinet to review current community partners. We have determined whether each partnership is still active and how many students are benefiting from it. you know some obviously a wide range
there and we are developing wish lists so really saying like wouldn't it be great if we had and working to form those partnerships the other big piece of objective two has been work that we've been doing on portrait of the graduate um there has been an enormous work done portrait of
the graduate came out of our previous um strategic plan and when we were planning for this one the request was to revisit it this has not been a throw the baby out with the bath water and start from scratch. This has been take an excellent idea that we had and review it and to
look at what needed to be tweaked and updated 5 years later. So we have worked to gather feedback from preschool to grade 12 faculty to evaluate each of the current language or each of the current areas and the language that is part of that. Um, we have reviewed all of that
feedback and we have looked for patterns and recommendations and we have refu reviewed similar districts to figure out, you know, how do we align with other districts? Um, and we're all very like very similar across the board when you look at trying to prepare your students to be socially and emotionally
well, college and career ready and responsible adults. We want them to be all of those things. We've continued this work by revising all of the statements um to make sure that there's a an appropriate progression, right? So, if something is in the elementary school, what does it look like when you get to middle school
and how do you stretch that into high school? Um we've made all of these we've turned all of the statements into I can statements or really we set our English supervisors loose on the document and make sure that they felt that all of the tenses and plurals and grammar was all
excellently done. Um and we met as a bowl team to review final draft. Um I will say that when we met to review the final draft, as it often happens in committees, it was decided it was not the final draft. And so we will be bringing a small team in to making some um smaller smaller tweaks and then we
will bring it to um Mary and talk about what happens next with our portrait of the graduate. Okay, moving on. Objective three to examine the curriculum to create a standard progression of learning across the grade levels um
content areas and academic levels. So the first way we've been doing this is is we've divided each of the content areas up over several years. Right? So we are last year we were doing um reading, this year we're doing writing. Um last year we did I think we did we we
did math and now this year we're doing science. Right? So, we're looking for the the the content area supervisors to work with their teachers to actually look for skill gaps. So, this is we have the standards. Um there's always a written curriculum and a taught curriculum. Where are we missing any
skills that we wish our students had? And there has been a lot of articulation between teachers. Um probably more articulation between departments, teachers, and buildings than I've ever seen before um in my years here in Montgomery. It's been very exciting. Um so we are seeing that we've got the
science articulation is already well underway. Um Asian and PE departments are scheduled to discuss curriculum in the upcoming PD day which may have happened in February. I think it did. And um the reading and English departments are working in the spring to have this happen.
Um math curriculum writing is planned for 2026 to revise units to better reflect the articulation that happened last year. And um really on the February 17th day, it was incredibly exciting to watch all of our English teachers or
language arts teachers um from K1 was the only grade that didn't transition a building, but we had articulation between each of the transitioning grades and it was one of the most powerful days that I've ever experienced. So it was really cool. Okay. There was also a request as part
of this objective to develop a common philosophy around CP honors AP placement and rigor. And the question on the like the plain question on the table is is it possible for a honors course to be more rigorous than an AP course and is that
appropriate? And this has been an ongoing conversation with the different content areas of the high school cabinet. It has been one of the most informational um conversations that I've been a part of and it really helps when you have the experts of their content in
the room. And so what really um the supervisors were incredibly articulated explaining is that based on there's there's so many nuances and layers that can come into this. The first and the most obvious is the content of the course. If the content of the course is
uh you know a literature the language course where you're doing language and composition that's going to have a different level of rigor than a course in which you are in an honors course but you're going to be reading you know 10 novels that year. It can feel different and it's based on the content. It also
depends on the different pathways that students choose because when you get into the 11th and 12th grade, you have students pursuing different STEM, you have pursuing different humanities and it begins to put students in um that begins to change the makeup of the
course as well. And so really that is just another influencing factor on the perception of the academic rigor across the three areas. I will say to you at this point I feel very comfortable and confident with the academic rigor and the rationale at each of the levels. Um
but this is never going to be a conversation that we stop. You know this is part of all of that articulation and all of that curriculum alignment that I've just spoken about in the other two slides. Okay. Objective four. Although we wrote it as emerging technologies, the emerging technology that everybody is
talking about is AI. So we have committed this year to identifying stakeholders to include in technology committees and to create a policy aligned with our mission and vision. So the building cabinets as I mentioned before are going to be used as our tech committees. MHS has gotten out in front.
They have created an incredibly robust document that identifies AI guidelines in different um different courses and in you know different categories. It really created a pretty great tool that LMS are using right now to examine from their
lens as well. All of these will end up in the handbook next year. So next year you should see AI um language to help stu to help inform students of ethical and acceptable uses of AI um and to help to make sure that our students know what
is and is not accepted. We are also continuing to seek administrative P professional development on AI use and its integration into district software monitoring appropriateness and curricular impact. There's probably not a tool that I have opened this year that
we have owned for many years that now doesn't have a button that says AI integration. So, it's constantly making sure that we are up and we are professionally we are developed on what are the new things that are being added to the software that we use. Um we are developing high school and middle school student advisory groups to get the
student voice on AI as well and that will be coming this spring. Um in addition, we count on Mr. Brooks to be taking a pulse on the edtech environment um through conferences, through county and state meetings, um through other professional
organizations, and he really is the guide of um helping us determine what is ethical and acceptable both staff and student use. Um and so again continuing that professional development and professional collaboration through team department and articulation meetings.
It's this is different at every level. It is different at every content area and it's different based on what AI is now able to do today that it couldn't do yesterday. So this is definitely a challenging objective because it is emerging hourly.
And last but not least, um in order to do all four of those objectives that I've already mentioned, you have to have a continuous commitment to building your internal staff capacity for leadership um to be able to turnkey the things that they do wonderfully well. And so all
also exploring opportunities to provide more peer coaching within the content areas. Um, I mentioned the UDL leadership coaching and there also on the PD surveys are questions on how to enhance and increase our summer PD attendance. This used to be something
that was um regularly attended just because there was a lot of offerings that teachers really enjoyed. There seems to be a lot of barriers um that have been postcoid that are hard to overcome. And so just really looking for ways to increase uh teacher flexibility
and attendance at PD that happens outside the school day which is difficult and challenging. And so we you know we're asking our teachers how can we help um and this is goal two I was just going to keep going but I'll introduce you
goal two um is led by questions or you want to do >> sorry. All right. So, I'm going to pause now and say, are there any questions with Gold T1? >> Yeah. Hi. I have a question is when you mentioned about uh the high school the
um you know honor AP opportunities. Uh so, uh do we also looking for expanding some dual enrollment opportunities for >> Oh, we we yes, that is absolutely part of it. Um we we have we you know we you as you know we do have dual enrollment
with Satan Hall and we are looking to continue to expand that. >> Okay. So I know for Seat Hall is for the pot pottery ray subject and looking for more expanding to other subject or >> I'm looking to Mr. Galgado because it falls under him and he's I'm going to
I'm going to give a halfway answer when he's standing right behind me. I can give the robust answer. >> Yeah. We're looking to scale up our offerings for dual mode. We have a great partnership with Satan Hall right now and uh so we right now have some courses pending approval, some instructors pending approval so we can gradually
build out our our full we call concurrent enrollment program. >> That's really great to know. Thank you so much. >> One more question. So you you you mentioned that you do have community uh experts come and speak to students, right? How do how do you reach out to
them or they apply or how how do >> So right now the first step that we've done in this year remember this is a five year a five-year plan. We're in year two. So our step this year was to gather the the partnerships that the schools already have in existence. And so that was part one. Then part two was
to truly an analyze those. So are they still in place? Who brought them in? And are they still being used? And then the last piece that we've where we are up to is the schools creating the wish list of saying okay well wouldn't it be great if we had someone who could talk about um
farming methods if we had somebody who could come in and talk about social media as a career. if we could have someone who could come, you know. So, what we're doing is looking for we've asked and surveyed what are you looking for and what would enhance your curriculum and then we will build a process next year in um how to gather
and communicate to the community to gather more local resources. Absolutely. That's the goal. >> And do you have any plans of having alumni come and speak to kids? >> I just didn't hear you say it again. >> Alumni like somebody graduate? >> I think we've already had that. There's
a um it'll be spoken about in one of the other goals. Some incredible things that are going on at the high school and alumni have already been in and sharing some of their unbelievable accomplishments. We have such impressive kids. It's pretty impressive. Thank you. >> Same for me.
So, I've been in administrative meetings where Corey has had us all stand up and do exercises. >> He's the next one. So, it's possible he's going to ask you to stand up and move around. >> All right. So, thank you for having me
here. Uh looking very much forward to sharing out on where we are with goal two. So, you've had a little bit of time to look at this slide. um some of what I shared last spring to many of you uh that were on the board. I have an opportunity now to say how did
we follow through with that? So we did in fact launch a new website. We received uh via survey we received feedback from our stakeholders and the feedback was great and I did share this that they said exactly what we set out to accomplish with a new website. We
were hearing that feedback. uh could search, you could locate things simpler uh browsing experience much better and actually one of the things that Mr. Brooks brought forward when we were taking a look at this is so many of us will utilize our phones when we're
looking at information on the website. Our former site was not as good as our current site. I think our current site has done a wonderful job of taking the information and you could view it very cleanly and simply on your phone and that is something that's very important.
>> Oh jeez. >> Yeah. Any questions so far? One quick question. >> Yeah. >> What would we say is your your main means of communication? Is it the website? Is it multi is it the social media? Is it all the channels posting? >> Yeah, we're actually Yeah, we're going to have a slide that's going to talk
about the survey that we uh sent to uh stakeholders. Many of you probably participated in it for the second straight year. And I have some of that information. It really depends on the information that we're sending out will determine how folks want that information.
Yeah. So, this was a commitment that we had really even before the strategic plan, but we were able through the strategic plan to really put it uh down, take a look at it, and have other people understand it. So, one of the things we talked about last year when I stood
before you was um utilizing all of our modes of communication. So, when we take a look at what our principles are doing and what our superintendent is doing, we are keeping current. We're utilizing Instagram accounts, we're making sure that Facebook, LinkedIn, that that's all
there. And when you view the website of your child or if you want to take a look at the larger scale book districtwide, you could see that. What I also want to make you aware of is the work that our principal is doing with communication. So often um and I realized this last
year when I presented twice, I had overlooked some things. So things that I want you to be aware of, you're receiving it sometimes and if you're not the one receiving it, your students are receiving it. So it could be those newsletters that your principles send to you, the grade level assemblies where we are disseminating important information
and we are communicating with students. Um, sometimes it's very important for our principles to be sending out very topic specific eblasts. They're not standard. They don't go into a school year expecting that to send them, but they do in fact send them when it's very, very important and information
needs to be shared out. Um, the monthly meetings with our PTO, PTA, the involvement of SEPTA as well, all ways that we're disseminating information and morning meetings to our students and podcasts. So, we've had a principal do a
podcast this year, multiple podcast. This I want to say I want to thank members of the board um from last spring. So, I had shared a very similar slide and the board said, "Hey, why don't you get information in addition to what your principles are doing, what they really think are important
information, ask parents." So, I said, "Great idea. Easily to implement that." That's where the sharing out is so critical with the stakeholders. Sometimes the most obvious things, I'm not saying you overlook them, but it's good that when things are pointed out. So, kudos to you all and to those that
served on the board back in the spring when I did this. So, both the superintendent and the principles did this. So, they sent something uh specific to their schools or in the case of the superintendent to the district as a whole. what are some topics that you'd be very interested in
being presented to you coming to our round table. Then they took the time to break it down. The principles I believe did it in a one of the structures we have in place which is our monthly principles meeting and they were able to identify um some very common themes that
were apparent from the parents in each of the schools. Then they came up with a very good idea which I will share shortly. Uh we'll first start with our superintendent. So superintendent will be doing her first round table of the year March 4th and the focus will be on
curriculum instruction and then she will have something in the spring so later in the year and that topic is still to be discussed or I should say determined. So our principles when I referenced earlier about them being part of the principal meeting and taking a look what
they realized is there were very common themes. So when they were taking a look at what their uh parents had shared they realized that mental health building citizenship um and transitions transitions came up in every single
building. They came up with the idea. If you recall last year when I shared out with you, we had very structured parameters on how we were going to do this. It was going to be one in person specific time structured in a way where presentation would be x amount of minutes. Q&A
session would be about 15 and then we were going to do a very similar practice virtually. Well, this year I said let's explore and I even shared that with all of you in the spring. Let's come up with how you want to do it. whatever level of creativity you want to implement or if you really feel like that in person very
similar to last year is the approach with presentation and Q&A let's do it let's serve the parents of the schools they said what if we do the five of us together I said that's a great idea so that was something um again this is a
reminder last year was the first year this district had ever done roundts to that extent I have never heard not to say it hasn't existed I have never heard of the district where they have all five principles coordinating and providing an
opportunity for whoever wants to come meet with all them at the same time and then in a very intimate setting which turned out to be pretty intimate. um ask the questions that they wanted to specific to that principal and realize
when you're in the presence of those five, I have an opportunity, yes, to see my child's principal and then depending on what grade level your child's in, I can see the next one, two, three principles. It was a great method. It really was. Um and those of you that
were there, thank you so much for coming. It's something that uh the principles absolutely spent a lot of time in preparing for. It's I think it went over in time because of the questions that were coming from the participants
and it's something that the principles are going to absolutely digest um analyze and it's something we're going to probably lead our next principal meeting with providing opportunity something similar. But again that second round table it probably won't look like
that just because it's something that the principles will decide to do something else for no other reason. I think it was successful in conveying a very clear message. We have five principles that communicate. We have five uh principles that put the students
above everything else. And in a district that's all you could ask for prioritizing students needs. possibly joyous what you were asking but I don't want to presume. So for the second year last year, we did administer
um the MSP survey and the goal of this survey was we wanted stakeholders to tell us how they want information provided to them. Where are they seeking out? So is it the website? Is it email? And what I did was I broke it down. This
is probably the most heavy text of any of my slides. And it's very similar to what I did last year. I just want you to see what what everyone said. So they said when we want information on general district news or school events, we want
email. If you recall last year before we we transition to a new website, I I was before I said our arts and our athletics are something that we need to spotlight.
I I done a pretty obvious job. I think you all know MSG is not in Montgomery and we know that the Mets's not in Montgomery. So, I talked about what a better way what a better way to be entertained. Go to the athletic events that we have of our high schoolers.
Participate in the art shows. Participate in the music and the plays. We prioritize that. We want the community to know about that, not just if you're a high school parent. So, when we take a look at text messaging, you might have received a text message
yesterday possibly. Our superintendent alluded to the fact they were very specific. If you're going to do something um serious, you're going to let us know that there's going to be an early dismissal, late arrival, or there's going to be a cancellation. This is how we want to be
communicated with. And then of course, Genesis has always remained the source for student and academic progress other than the teacher themselves of course. So we are trying our best to stay in alignment with what everyone has said
and what they want. And then there are instances of course where we're using multiple modes of communication. This is something I brought forward last year in a very similar uh during the board meeting. The community tasked us with find
opportunities for students. So this is unlike what you heard Miss Borland talk about. This is more having our students going out. So last year we put together a survey and we administered the survey to last
year's 9inth and 10th graders and we had results we identified and I had shared with you last year the the area that students are most interested or they expressed was STEM so science math that area we said it's ideal let's do this
again so we kept the same grade bands 9th and 10th with the understanding that this year, three of the grade levels would have participated or been provided the opportunity to be in that. So, we were able to capture our current 9th graders, our current 10th graders twice,
this year and last, and then our current 11th graders. Very similar responses. I want to now talk about how we are going to be connected with our Montgomery Business Association. So, I had the pleasure of attending a meeting
at the high school. It was I think it might have been before winter break. Needless to say, I was able to connect with uh members of the MBA. I know we have multiple MBAs, but when I say that, I'm saying Montgomery Business Association, right? And they've been
wonderful. So, um I was able to have another meeting with a smaller group of them and really what we're going to do is we're going to get together. I'm going to share I gave an overview of the uh the data that we received both last year and this year. I gave an overview. They were happy to hear that they had
shared about some new businesses that will be coming into town as well as those businesses that are pretty stable and been a part of the MBA. So, our next steps are meet with them most likely bring in Mr. Delgado because there was some conversation regarding school counseling and perhaps Miss Pino as well
because she is our high school principal and identify what are the connections we can make for our students with our local businesses. So are there mentoring opportunities potentially? Maybe there's just work opportunities where students could learn a lot from that as well. And
we're keeping it from within. So something I'm very enthusiastic about. Um I seem to be the one delivering. I just want to point that out to all of you because Denine I think you asked a question that I now have the opportunity to talk about. Right. Okay. So the lunch and learn series is something that Mr.
Elgato and his team started last year. So this year we've had the opportunity or I should say our students at the high school have had the opportunity on two occasions. Um one in January and then one as recently as this month and when Mr. Argado sets this up he provides
students with two options. So the options that were provided in January it happened to be a former grad 2005 class. um I would identify that area would be in finance. And then the second option that day uh was someone that we would identify in the medical field. So
students sign up during their lunch period. So they're giving an opportunity, they're provided an opportunity to sit for the more or less the bulk of that lunch period and listen to these individuals speak about their life probably when they were high schoolers, post high school, then going
into their career. And then as recently as this month, we also had similar, we had two other individuals. One was our director of security, Tom Wayne. So he shared his experience in law enforcement, what got him there. And then we also had a very successful, and I think everyone's successful in their
own right. Uh very successful member of the class of 2007, also now a resident in town, uh Katherine Connelly. Uh she's an entrepreneur and she very achieved high level of success um in the tech field. Here's what I want to share. Um,
I had the opportunity being in both rooms and there was great things to take away. It it the thing that I took away the most was both individuals completely different fields talked about support,
how critical support was for their success. And I think it really resonated with the students. Now, they both did a wonderful job of saying they had support, but sometimes you have to have your eyes open and realize that that support is there and they were terrific.
And I'm sure Mr. Delgado, if you ask him questions, he can go into more detail. I think this is a wonderful thing we're providing to our students in the high school. I think it's inspiring and it's something that, you know, I'm really happy we brought um to the
district. It It's great. this one. Okay. So, this objective four was something that the community brought forward as as something that they wanted us to take a look at. I stood before you last year and said, if you remember, this is where I had a lot of slides. I
broke down the amount of usage in all of our schools, how often the schools um and the facilities are being utilized by outside organization. It became very apparent and I had shared that with all of you that we now need to transition into another area of this to gain
success and that was where it's going to be moved into the operations facilities and finance committee OFF and my understanding is discussion on facility usage has begun as early as with the new committee and then with um outside
organizations that we welcome they come in there's also the piece where we want to make sure that we have secure areas both for the groups that are coming in as well as for our facilities as a whole. So, we we took the responsibility of um realizing that's important. We had
our director of security meet with um the local fire inspector and just discuss about gates. And gates are important because it gives an opportunity for the outside group to utilize the facility that they need to utilize while also keeping the other areas of the school, you know, secure.
I'll say no more on that. All right, this one is challenging. So, this one I am optimistic, but it's taking um as as you can imagine, it's just taking a little bit longer. Okay, so you didn't need me to
share this with you. We're aware of this. This is something that is not just in Montgomery, not just in New Jersey, but nationwide. So, that doesn't mean that we we quit and say it's just going to be what it's going to be. Quite the opposite. That's not how we operate here. It's not how you operate as board members. So, we are going to address the
sharp decline in volunteerism. All right. So, what we want to take a look at beyond our conversations, and I've had wonderful conversations with our parent organizations, PTO, PTA SEPTA, um wonderful conversations with our administrators who head the boosters, uh
both athletic as well as our music boosters, and I intend to have even deeper conversations with members of those booster clubs. let let's present information is is where we are right now and we want to utilize our website. So
there will be hopefully in the very near future we'll have an additional tab on our website which will be dedicated to volunteerism. We will talk generally about the benefits of volunteerism. Then the level of comfort that all of those organizations that I mentioned in
listing all the opportunities that they provide students in their own way. They will communicate that on this website for all to see. And I think we just take certain things for just like they're always going to
happen. Someone's always going to do it. Um what we realize, everyone that I've been able to speak with is let's inform folks what is being done. Yes, there's a lot of work that goes into play and
again in a sometimes maybe assertive way, maybe a direct way. Let everyone know that this just doesn't happen. And not to be negative. We don't want to say it won't happen if but the reality is we do need volunteerism. certain things do
need to occur with the support of others and we will be respectful. We will be informative first and foremost when that tab is created and that site is is put up with the understanding that that's something we can always improve and we can move upon. But we just felt very
strongly that others need to know what few are doing in order to get others to participate and that few becomes a little bit larger. This is our commitment to our partnership with our township.
So the work that we started last year um in particular with our communication specialists and with his counterpart at the township level, so the community information officer that has continued the meetings whether they be in person,
virtual or over the phone. Um seeing that it's important for us to have things on the township website. It's also important for us to have things on our website that the township is putting forward. And one of those things that you can see is kindergarten registration is really important. Um that just to
name one. And then continuing um link to the township weekly e- bulletin that appears on our weekly e-news and as well as our website. And we're promoting several township sponsored events this school year. And this is just an example of a couple that we're promoting as
well. So, it's really that community engagement, that partnership, and the emphasis on communication. All right, get ready because I think Cory's going to have you do what he's doing. Push-ups, crunches, >> situps. >> Setups. Okay. So, so before before he
does that, what questions do you have? Um, going back to the decline of volunteerism, what spec or can you give examples of specific feedback that you got that contribute contribute to that? I I think uh it really depends on the
group and the activity. I think I'm going to try to generalize it as such. Um people are extremely busy. They are trying to do their best for their children and they're trying to to meet all the needs of their their their
children. in turn um they may not understand that they are surrounded by people who have that same mindset and they are trying to do best for their children and they're also trying to do best for the students of Montgomery whether it be at the grade level at a
school level. So, I don't want the frustration to continue for the people that have put so much time and energy in, but I also want to recognize that parents do have a lot on their plate. So, I know I'm not really
answering your question greatly, but that's really what's driving what we intend to do on the website. Let's inform, be aware of this, invite you to participate in this, understand that this is something that truthfully is purely driven for students.
No one is getting accolades. They're not in it for that. They're doing it for to maintain in some cases traditions, wonderful activities. Sometimes they're they're 20 plus years old. Sometimes they just started and we just want to maintain it. So I I think everyone has a
different reason. I And I would say that you know generalizing that's what it is. >> I have one small question. >> Sure. Um um you mentioned uh uh MBA on government business association. You work with them for mentorship and all.
>> Do we work with uh the local government for any kind of member mentorship if students who want to get involved in politics or anything like that? Do we work with the local governments too? >> You know, I'm going to say no to that, but then I might be challenged and say
that there's something that we've done. I'm not aware that that's something that we'll definitely get back to this larger group with in order to provide you the answer. >> Yeah. >> I have two questions. The first one is you mentioned the five principal night,
the round table night and I also heard from the community went really well and they really appreciate the five principles stayed a little bit longer to address their questions. So um how many parents showed up? >> So intimacy
is the word I want to emphasize the that we were under a hand we'll say double handful is a little bit under >> but sometimes few people can do a lot right let's say >> yeah absolutely
>> okay so that's at least to my next question is is there any way we can I know a lot many of us are working parents exactly as you mentioned a lot of things are happening are there any ways we can think about to engage them So great question and as I said we're
going to come together as a principal uh the principles will come together during principal meeting um superintendent myself um and Miss Mattis the other assistant superintendent we'll have an opportunity we were all there let's talk about the evening let's talk about how
potentially when we're providing that to the community how can we get more people to come so it is a challenge but ultimately and I I hate to use survey because it's that that's not always the answer we're probably going to lean a little a little bit on maybe you all and just ultimately reach out like what were
some of the challenges but again I know it it's the winter months are challenging the activities I think everyone has their children in so many activities um so I get it but we're going to work together and find that out we might maybe we'll lean on you a little bit as well to say give us some
other insight because that's how we get things accomplished right Sharon >> so uh sorry I have one more question uh you mentioned when you observed the high school events and both illumini talked about the support. Um could you clarify
a little bit like what do they mean by support? The mean the mean like the uh when they frustrated uh I'm asking this because you know it's >> it's very interesting. I present similar topic uh at ruckus too with a lot of
administrators. uh one interesting finding we find that the student learning attitude uh is a significant predictor for the first year retention and one of the survey questions did ask about support. So I just find out the question is asking I'm aware of the care
and support of those uh around me. So is that similar to what you mean by support? Yeah, off the top of my head, I I'll tell you, one of the presenters talked about the support of a high school uh teacher coach who was instrumental in getting them into
college. Then talked about the support that he received while he was in the police academy. The other presenter talked about um really touching about the support she had received from her mother throughout
through friends um peers and professors and that support sometimes and they both spoke about that in their own way. Sometimes you don't recognize it at the m in the moment. Sometimes you realize it after the fact
but it's there. And we have all been, you know, the benefits of receiving support. What do you do with that support? And that's what they talked about too. Hey, we received the support, we then focused and then we were able to move forward. But that support's
critical. And I just found it so interesting because on the surface it was completely different pathways, but that that one thing and again I I did try to split my time. I just I think I was very fortunate to hear a common theme and that's reality, right? I think
we all could probably tell a story on like the people who supported us and then you're like, "Wow, I didn't even realize that person supported me. It didn't seem as obvious, but it was actually very critical to us getting through a tough time or even really being successful in a particular venture and I'm sure that's what you're doing, right?"
>> Yes. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. >> Thank you. So, yeah. So if I may allow to add a little bit to that is I think um support is one type of the aspect in the measurement field we talk about this learning attitude in that I want to
share this is because I I consider we're good community and we want to support is not just support but also you know based on what the research find the students curiosity uh you know they're willing to work hard they're willing to take time
to follow up interested things that they mentioned in the class motivated to do things and they are facing challenging they never give up and they're persistent pursuing their dreams to the end and often uh as you said people give them good advice to help them to succeed
all those things when you survey those students freshman uh we call them learning attitude the more they self-rated them more positive on the scales for all those things I mentioned they're more likely to survive through the four year college.
>> So I just want to share that message with all of us you know with parents and students and so that's how we call positive learning attitude. >> I like it. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> I just had a comment on volunteering because I am a former synagogue
president and in my job I also help organize people to volunteer and since co it's not just you there really is a decline in volunteering. I just want to add that that is a national problem. It's not just here. >> Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. >> Cory, just uh going back to the five
principles round table. Have you Oh, I said Cory. I'm so sorry. I was thinking of Cory. I'm sorry. Damian, I apologize. >> No problem. Um going back to the five principles uh round table, have you considered or did you consider a hybrid approach? Especially with parents with younger kids, you know, it's hard for
them to either get a babysitter or, you know, bring their kids into school. had considered a hybrid approach for that. >> I think it's something we'll talk about. Um the goal of that meeting was that in-person feel which again I recognize potentially then doesn't that hybrid it
was really important to the principles. Um we supported them too that in person and and often the turnout number doesn't match the individuals who say they're going to come and and for good reason things happen.
>> Um so that's just the reality of it. Yeah, we're going to discuss a lot of things um that transpired in there and then just talk about what what will that second one look like for for each principal. What will the first one look like? You know, obviously for the superintendent and the second one as well,
>> but um it it was good. It was very good. >> Yeah. Hey, >> hello. I don't know if this is for you, Damian, for you totally. On the topic of mentorship, um would you be considering having a dedicated person in the school
being in charge of how to connect students with mentors? Would that individual or that office be open to having our former graduates um who are in college and are about to graduate college are looking for ways to
connect with how do I like this is my major. I want to look for a career. I don't know who I can talk to. Um can they come back to the school and say just can you connect me with somebody in in in the community who I can um have conversation with about what my major
could be a career path towards. I bring that up because I do I had somebody who graduated in 22, not my son, um somebody else from 22 who reached out to me that I'd met once or twice and asked for a meeting. So I met with her, I talked to
her about her career path. I connected her with somebody from my organization um and it helped her. So I'm just curious about, you know, opportunities for also former um graduates from Montgomery who who would like some guidance as well.
>> Yeah, I think that the benefit of working with the local business association is so much is going to come out of it that probably we're not even thinking about right now. And that that's how I would would answer your question. I think we're going to
have a very um it'll be definitely goal oriented approach in coll in collaboration with the MBA and then I think the things that will come out of that potentially could address what you're saying. But I think going into what we're going to do is really take a
look at those currently at MHS and see what we could do. But I I can't imagine just in my two brief meetings that I had with the members of the NBA, I can't imagine something beyond what we're the three of us were talking about today,
but won't go beyond that. I I envision something. I don't know exactly whether it's going to look like, but it definitely the focus will be our current students and then we'll see where it goes from there. >> Yeah. And cookies question kind of I have followup questions more for current high
schoolers since we have uh collaboration relationship with the MBA um do we consider like establish some uh you know offer some internship opportunities for the current high schoolers >> through that channel. >> Yeah. So that's the goal. The goal would be our current students depending on
what it is that that would be offered whether it's a mentorship or potentially like a job opportunity. Of course, that'll be age specific, but that's our goal. >> Yeah, that is the goal. Absolutely. >> All right. Thank you. Thank you, Damian.
>> Okay. You manifested me. So, here I am. All right. And what Damian was referring to is something called a brain break, which is different than it's different than a bathroom break. It's different than a water break, but it's absolutely necessary because um we as educators
often when students aren't in the room, we forget what good pedigogy is and we don't model it. And we know there's science. Dr. Wang will know this that the brain can't take in any more information. Even the adult brain at a certain point. So a brain break is
brief. It includes something kinesthetic and it takes your mind intentionally somewhere else. So, I'm going to shave 2 minutes off of my presentation to sacrifice for a one minute brain break. Are you ready? Are you with me? Nobody's going to be embarrassed or anything like
that. And I'm going to encourage everybody behind me to join in as well. So, when I ask you to, you're going to stand up. You're going to spin 360° counterclockwise. Then you might need to continue spinning a little bit so that you are not facing
anyone with your eyes open or closed. You are going to spell your first and last name backwards. Just to yourself. Okay. Ready? We're going to stand up 360° spin counterclockwise. Put your
back to the crowd. Spell your name in your brain backwards. When you come back to facing the group, we know you were successful or you think you were successful, but you're not. >> I got a chick because I don't I speak
Chinese's character. >> Okay. Well, we if we would have asked Maria to spell her name in Chinese, that would have been a good brand. >> Okay. Does anybody want to try to spell their name out loud backwards? >> Anyone confident? >> You just said you wouldn't know better.
>> I'm just volunteering. Volunteering. >> Okay. No volunteers. Okay. That's your brain break. So, Kelly and I lead goal three. The goal three team. I'm going to give you a brief uh Julius. It's always a minute tonight. That's it. One minute.
Um, but typically, honestly, when we when we went to teaching in the block schedule, we knew we had to start teaching differently. And, you know, you have to understand the science of the brain in order to be an effective teacher, whether you're in a block schedule or a traditional schedule. And we know for the adolescent brain, not
much different than the adult brain, you only get about 30 minutes to give new information. After that, you better reset the brain and then go at it again. So, um, we did we breached that that, uh, limit, I think, by a lot, but we're going to try to be interesting,
engaging, and brief here for goal three. So, goal three is about supporting our students well-being and um, fostering healthy school climates. And, I'm fine if anybody wants to stand up and listen, that that works, too. Are um, an action
from last year that was referenced several times this year. I I just want to reiterate, we're not talking about actions from last year. So, our career exploration goal last year led to that lunch and learn program that was referenced. Um but and that was talked about a bunch today. This year, um to
support mental health and physical well-being, we implemented new cell phone guidelines in grades 7 through 12 and we're analyzing the impact. Uh I want to give a shout out to um Miss Pino and Mr. Ricardi and their building teams
cuz because they vigilantly um enforced these new guidelines and fortunately our students and kudos to our students and our parents who were very receptive and very cooperative. And I think a big part of the reason that it was successful is because we took our
time to explain the why. There's a lot of science out there that tells us misuse of social media, misuse of cell phones leads to a lot of problems. and we as a school, we need to own our part and do our best to mitigate that risk. So, the new cell phone guidelines are in
place. Students are reporting that they are less distracted and more engaged in class. They are reporting that they appreciate uh us for lifting the pressure for them to have immediate responses to all of those notifications that are typically
going off. Uh staff has reported students being more engaged. Um staff has reported students being more interactive even during the nonstructured time when they are allowed to have their phones like in lunch and study hall. So really good things coming of it. Staff has also noticed a
phenomenon. No one needs to go to the bathroom anymore. It's amazing that there is a connection there's a connection between uh biology and cell phone. We didn't know that was a thing, but that's okay. Um, we're continuing, our digital wellness
committee is continuing our family outreach. We'll have a fourth family event on April 22nd. So, we encourage you to save the date. We have some information coming out. It's called Beyond the Screens: Parenting in the Digital Age. The conversation continues. So, we've had well over 120 attendees
for all three of our previous events. It's a topic that parents uh want to engage with us in. So, we're going to keep on on bringing it. The uh SEAL curriculum and SEAL assessments have been pilot has been developed and piloted in grades K through five. The
assessment has and that's been telling uh to try to evaluate our students social and emotional learning. It's is not easy, but uh we're having some early success. And we have launched our peer suicide prevention program hope squads
engrades 5 through 12. Uh this winter we've had the nomination selection process. We had our family information meetings for all three buildings. Those were in-person meetings. Well over 50 attendees for each of those. So really well received and and those uh programs
are off and running or that program is off and running. Encouraging responsibility and accountability is our second objective. The vice principles are continuing to work on the codes of conduct that guide student behavior in our schools. So they have found some
disconnects and they are making some connections there. There are has been some improvements made to our codes of conduct where they are more developmentally appropriate. There is a developmentally appropriate progression for consequences. There's common language um including a lot of
restorative activities not just traditional consequences. The core values at the school levels are being promoted intensely by staff at this point in the year. You could walk, you could ask any student in the village elementary school to tell you Blazers beliefs and they will tell you and they will be able to relate it back to
experiences they're having in their day-to-day life as a village elementary as a village elementary school student. That's just one example of what's happening in all the buildings. And in spite of all that work, we still are dealing with very challenging student
behaviors, especially in our elementary schools. Montgomery is not a meeting that's happening across the country. We're seeing an uptick in challenging behaviors, especially among our elementary school students. We brought in some really um proven and innovative
outside consultants and trainers to work with staff K through 12 on classroom management strategies really focused on helping students who are disregulated to get regulated. And I'll I'll spare you the details on that, but it's been really well received by our staff. And
to see some of the strategies in play has been absolutely amazing. Uh our third objective is about promoting and celebrating diversity and inclusivity. So you recently had a presentation from some of our unified
uh leaders. Oops. Some of our unified leaders uh as the high school received a really amazing recognition as a unified champion school. We are expanding our unified program. Uh and we launched this year unifi at lower middle school. We
launched unified dance classes at Montgomery High School and we put our existing unified PE program at Upper Middle School through a lot of curriculum revisions. We're in like the fourth year of that now. Students are coming up with different needs. So, we put a lot of time and attention into the
unified program at uh at great. And our superintendent continues to put out a newsletter twice a year celebrating accomplishments through through uh district publications. Um, Mr. Papup have talked about the website. We're going to start doing some more things out there on the website, pushing out a
lot of the great work that's going on. And our last objective has to do with developing a respectful community that uplifts all members. Let's find out how respectful our community is. Let's get some baseline data. It's been a little while since we've done a climate survey
here in Montgomery. So this spring we'll be launching the New Jersey school climate initiative survey that is developed uh through a partnership of Ruters and the Department of Education New Jersey Department of Education. We piloted it a few years ago in one of our
schools and really uh we saw the value in the the way that it coalated the data and that the reports that we were able to get back from it. It was a really useful platform. It's free so the price tag is good and a lot of New Jersey school districts have gone to it. So this spring we'll be doing a climate
survey for uh staff, students, and parents. And we're looking forward to let you know how that what the results look like. So um we'll take those results in the spring. We'll work on them throughout the summer through collaborative school-based teams to put together some goals for the fall.
That's all for in a couple of minutes or less. Any questions? >> Yeah. You mentioned that last day is that to staff, students, parents too or no parents? Yes. >> All parents? >> Thank you. >> For students, it starts at grade three.
>> The cell phone >> the cell phone policy, right? We're going to have to modify that again because it doesn't comport with the new rules that will have to be implemented. >> Yeah. So, legislation is out there. We just we learned that um a revised guidelines is coming out. So, we'll stay
up to date. we'll comply with whatever we need to comply with. But we we did learn that the original guidelines have are already being revised. So, you know, before we jump the gun and do some things that maybe we don't need to do or don't want to do, we're going to wait and see when this final set of
guidelines comes out. But we did make significant changes in just this one year and we're really pleased with with the results. So, we're on the right we're going in the right direction. >> Um, two two quick questions. the one on the on the um
uh the survey, the you know, school climate survey. What would you say that you hope to get back as far as the number of responses in terms of how you know other school districts have used this particular platform before? What do
they see? And um how can we help you to get as much as possible back? Because I know the more data you get, the better your results are going to be, the better the outcomes are going to be. That's a good question. We haven't really put too much thought to that yet. Um, the students will be able to opt out of, you
know, obviously it's anonymous and voluntary, so the students will be able to opt out of taking it. We'll have the students in a very controlled setting, so it'll be easy for them to take it. It's not going to be homework. Um, I don't know what the right number is, Maria. It's a It's a good question. >> Like parents and things like that, like
really trying to make sure that >> Yeah. >> we get enough responses. >> Well, we'll be strategic. We'll have follow-ups. You know, it doesn't have to be a oneshot deal. So, our goal is end the last week in April, first week in May to administer it. So, uh if you have
some ideas on how we can entice people to take it, we'll see. You know, our this community tends to participate. So, I'm I'm optimistic. Um but we'll see. >> Could launch could it launch on Genesis to uh align with when report cards are
released? like some reason that parents are already going on and looking at something. I'm thinking about the same way that in order to get your student's schedule, you have to go through some reviews. Maybe there's you open the survey and you say, "No, I don't want to participate." >> At least acknowledge that
>> acknowledge that it's there. >> Yeah, possibly. Yeah. >> So, do you need a parents consent too to participate student? >> Yeah, it's voluntary. It's voluntary and anonymous. And so, yes, parents will parents could say, "I prefer my child not take that." Yes. So that there's an
opt out for for our students. >> And we mentioned a couple of years ago our school district participated this survey too. Was the response rate high? >> It was high. Yes, it was high. So we did I was the principal at the upper middle school at the time and we were one of five I want to say we were one of 15
schools in the state that piloted it and we had a very good response and we learned a lot from the survey. One of the things we learned from the survey is the while the adults in the building thought most of our students felt very connected to at least one adult in the building, the students didn't necessarily agree
with that. So that was really interesting for us. So we were very intentional in the following year in how do we foster that connection? We think we did, but the students are telling us we didn't. So that was just one example of something that was very tangible that we were able to be very intentional about going forward in the next year.
But it it measures more than just relationships. I mean, that's part of it. But just the the overall experience that parents and students and staff are having as being part of the Montgomery Township School District community is something we should want to know more about. So, we'll find out. >> So, it's anonymous. They don't have to write their name on
>> Oh, it's absolutely anonymous. Absolutely anonymous for everyone. Yes. One one other thing about um I think it was objective three um on um unified um just as a perception I I feel like I've
heard from being at some of the accepted meetings and things like that that I mean obviously everyone loves everything that we've done with unified and the average school before like everything um but there's like a drop off or less of
an opportunity for um kids who were really really robustly involved in it in seventh and eighth grade to continue on that pathway in ninth and tth and then like it it picks up again in 11th but like that momentum somehow gets lost.
Yeah, there's a gap there. >> Yeah, if there's a way for you to >> we've heard it loud and clear. So one example is this unified dance elective. So we had some eighth grade students who were very involved in the mass unified PE program who signed up to be part of the unified dance class. So that was one
way, but that was a, if you remember, that was all a pretty late addition last year. So more opportunities like that we hope to create because they feel so connected and then we disconnect them for two years whether they like it or not. So we do need to find some more >> opportunities for underassmen at the
high school. Yeah, absolutely. >> Anything I'm missing? >> Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Cord. And that concludes the superintendent report. >> Thank you, Superintendent. Uh, next up,
committee uh, sorry, committee representative reports. First up, MTA report. Mr. Rizzo. All righty. At least there wasn't robotics before me this time. This is a little a little easier to follow. All right. First of all, congratulations to all of our governors, teachers, and ESPs
of the year again for their awards. We really appreciate them. Also, I'd like to echo the sincere gratitude to our grounds, custodial staff for extraordinary work that they have done throughout the recent winter storms. These individuals are essential and vital success of our district. I want to especially thank the men and women who
reported during the recent blizzard and worked long hours to ensure that our buildings and grounds were safe and ready to reopen today. So, a huge shout out to them. Um, last month, President Todd asked about Read Across America. It begins next week. I appreciate that many of our board members have already signed
up to participate in the event. I know that all the classes will be excited to have their guest readers. If you still like to sign up, Stacy would be more than happy to have you. So, just let her know and she'll be able to fill out the form for you and get you into a classroom. Uh the final part of my report this evening, I would like to briefly acknowledge that once again, we
are entering budget season. I do not envy the responsibility of the board nor the difficult decisions that will be needed to make over the next couple months. What I do know is that last year funds were left on the table and as a result the district lost 17 positions.
The impact of those losses is felt every day by our students, staff, and community. As a district, we cannot continue to absorb setbacks of this magnitude as they are not sustainable in the long term. Additionally, like districts across the state are facing significant growing health care cost
crisis. I attended a meeting last evening with local, county, and state leaders focused on this issue. The continued rise in premiums will have substantial effect on district's budgets and on the funds available for other priorities. Now more than ever, it is critical that we make thoughtful
strategic fiscal decisions as we navigate these challenges. My requests for the board are straightforward. First is that this budget process be approached collaboratively, ensuring that all perspectives and relevant information are considered before decisions are made. Second, that the
district pause and carefully hold off on all financial decisions till the budget is finalized and ready for implementation. This includes monetary decisions, both large and small, such as bonus, compensation adjustments, or destination conferences for administration. Whether they are longterm fiscal obligations involve
discretionary spending, we need to hold off on these decisions until we know the hit our budget is going to take. We need this to ensure that Montgomery stays a top public school. I've said before, I do not envy the circumstances that you are in, but I trust the course that you choose will be thoughtfully considered
both immediate impacts and the long-term consequence for our students, staff, and community. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. We have any board member delegate or representative reports this evening? Hearing none, we'll move into board committee reports. First up, assessment
curriculum and instruction committee. Board member Warner. Hello, I'm speaking for Christina this evening. Um, the ACI meeting met on last Friday on February 20th. The first item for that we discussed was the K through4
feasibility. In January of 2025, the administration began meeting to intentionally analyze the feasibility of reconfiguration of Orchard Hill Elementary School and Village Elementary School as two K through four schools. The current configuration of Orchard Hill is preK through two and villages
third and fourth grades and discuss the potential benefits for the students. A feedback loop was created to gain input from the administration um including the business and transportation offices, staff and architects familiar with the physical layout of the schools. Based on the feedback collected and the
educational research shared, it leads the administration to believe that the potential benefits are many while the anticipated challenges are manageable. Some of the considerations uh discussed developmentally appropriate elementary setting, fewer transitions for students,
stronger relationships and continuity of support, an ease for families with engagement and convenience. Then also we need to look at the moving costs, the building updates impact on transportation and determining an efficient and equitable zoning. There
will be a mechanism for community input and looking at the timeline the decision would need to be made in the spring of 2026 for 2027 through 2028 academic year start. We also reviewed statewide assessments. Mr. Papa shared the administration dates
and the newly released t testing timelines from NJ DOE for the NJSLA adaptive ELA and math as well as the NJ GPA adaptive assessments. Information was provided about the NJSLA science access and DM assessments. Schools will provide their students and parents with
testing schedules. Schools are developing a testing schedule that is going to be consolidated yet not overwhelming for the students due to the testing duration. Data will be provided by the state in what the state considers a timely fashion, which isn't always what we consider a timely fashion.
just >> the new grade 8 social studies textbook, Voices and Perspectives, United States History, published by McGra Hill, was reviewed. The resource would be used in the spring of this school year. The resource aligns with the curriculum we currently have and is aligned with
potential changes from the state as well. Both eighth and 9th grade supervisors work together on the choice of book. And then looking uh to how we can integrate this in other grades a new the next year we'll consider a similar resource for grades six and seven.
An update from hope squad. This has been launched in all three schools LMS and MHS. As Corey mentioned it has been wellreceived. The adviserss went through the nomination process the selection process and the acceptance of an invitation from the students. Family nights were held and had good attendance
at all three schools. this month with the first month first meetings and trainings and and thankfully thank to the sponsors of the program who were also able to attend all three meetings. Special education update there was a transition fair that was going to be
held on the 21st uh 10 to1 at MHS. The fair was hosted for students with disabilities and families were able to get information on community organizations and post-graduation opportunities for those students. Read 180 pilot for LMS, and MHS. The
training took place for language arts replacement teachers. Teacher feedback was positive and they were very excited about starting this program. Teachers will be piloting the program over the next few months to support instruction. Any questions?
Hi, I have a question. Um for the I saw the um textbook um evaluation form was put provided in the system. So were there discussion around the textbook evaluation form and there's a scoring
rubric that developed by our own school uh teachers or it's adopted from some resources. >> I believe it's our schools that we developed in house. >> Oh yeah that's thank you. of note on that form
actually just because it I I was really pleased to see that both the um the upper middle school and the high school um supervisors were really excited about this program. Um, a couple of things to note about it that I think are are going
to be really great are um, it has like an adaptability of reading level for um, students so that you know if the Lexile score on something could be um, adapted so the the content is there and presented at a high level but the
readability is matched to each individual student. I thought that was really great. I just want to um reiterate that comment and also the only areas that it um fell short of a a five out of five was the um durability which
won't be too difficult because the actual books will be staying in the classroom and there's there's an online component for all students to have and the other part was um the alignment which I think is because of the fact that our um sixth and seventh are also
from, you know, 20 years ago. So, this is really, really great. I'm I'm excited that that we're going to have a new and updated book for our history courses in middle school. >> I have a followup question, something that how many books were looked into
before deciding this >> three books. >> Yeah. On the form, it it gives you the um the other two listed. >> I see. So they went deep into all three books what they going to offer and then they decide on this one. >> Okay.
>> Thank you. >> Any other questions? >> Good question. So um on the topic of the K through four feasibility sounds like a great initiative. I guess what are the next steps and is one of those steps like the it says look into moving costs like an assessment. Is this working in
collaboration with the off committee to see what it would take but I guess is is that part of the next step? Yes. >> Very good. >> Looking at the budget. >> Very good. Yes. >> Okay. Thank you, board member Warland. Next up, operations facility and finance committee board member Frank Herman.
>> Um the OFF committee um had our first meeting on February 17 and the meeting opened with uh a series of administrative housekeeping items um from Mr. Dangano um to establish procedural clarity before moving to the
main agenda which is the development of the 2627 school budget which is still being worked on by the superintendent and her team. U Mr. Delana will outline the district's um primary revenue streams, including state aid, where the
figures have not been released by the governor's office. Um but we expect that to remain the same, almost the same. Um tax levies and um outside tuition from students who are not Montgomery residents but would like to um go to
school in our you know, really good district. On the um expenditure side, the committee discussed increases driven by anticipated what we already anticipate payroll increase but also healthcare costs that is a nationwide
issue across both the private and public sector. Um, Superintendent Mccclaclin provided a historical overview of the rising expenses in health and benefit plans of the district and also from where we were at before self-insured to
now where we at uh with um the shared health um insurance plan. To address these budgetary pressures, budget meetings have been held by the superintendent and the business administrator with all the departments to identify priorities, potential cuts
and even looking at um various facility projects that could be put on hold. Um these were reviewed for inclusion in the budget draft. So when um Mr. Dalia's office is ready to share um the draft of
the budget. I welcome each member of this board to please meet with uh Mr. Taliano. He will offer opportunities and times for each of us to sit with him as he goes through the budget. I think it's a great exercise. I sat down with him for two and a half hours a couple of
weeks ago just to get the lay of the land on OFF and um he's I I kind of geeked out on the program that he's using for accounting that is very specific line item. If you're ever curious about all the things that go
into the budget, he can show you that. Um so please when he sends that um meeting invite um take him up on it >> after. >> Any questions? >> Yeah. May I ask for off committee notes?
There are a lot of questions were discussed but there are no response provided. So some of the questions a little bit out of context. So >> so I I did have a conversation with Mr. Adeliano. So, some of I think I shared this with you when I spoke to you on the
phone last night that some of the questions there that has something to do with the budget. We don't have answers to yet because they're still working on it. Um I think I referred to um the question one of the questions around um the state aid the state aid is taking
into account. I mentioned that in my remarks. Um he I'm miss you know another example is like what is the anticipated um you know uh tax raised we don't know that yet again all these budget
questions that are on here um they're still working on the answers to because they're not done with finalizing the budget I also shared with Mr. manner for future reference. If we do have questions that are um brought up at OFM,
they'd be part of our notes so that you can see them. >> Yeah, that would be really great. Thank you. Um another one I know we also talked about last time when the auditor reported the facility spending hikes. So in J 19 uh there are some ones I appreciate you mentioned about the
because of the kindergarten uh in 2023. So there's some uh you know facility uh sp uh spending on that. Um but there's one in village uh which doesn't quite make sense there. So if we can follow up next time that would be great.
>> I I did email u Mr. Delano and um Superintendent Mccclofflin after I spoke with you last night um going through the three questions that you had given me a week or two ago. Um that plus um what was the other one? facilities, the
headcount. Um, Mr. Dalliano has that and he will have an answer for you hopefully in the next couple days. >> Oh, don't worry. You can wait for the next business. >> But I shared with you talk to the public is more
important. >> I just have small budget. Um, thank you for the opportunity for us to come and see you to understand the budget. >> Sure. um really appreciate that because I'm very interested in learning the
budget process also. Um my question is would we uh just get the presentation from you or with you or do we get the reports as a backup to see like where we're standing what we are asking from each department like let's say for
example for special ed I'm just giving an example of special ed if special ed budget is say whatever the number will there be a back of paper to uh to support that I understand your
question. So, the presentation that we're talking about bringing the board members in, it's going to be collecting all the information and showing you what the bottom line is, going into the detail that the budget managers provided each of us to kind of make the day-to-day decisions. I'm not going to share that with everybody cuz those are
the things that the superintendent, myself, or cabinet went through to kind of make the choices. We'll give you an overview of what we did, but we're not going to share like every single quotation, every single request. Really, at the end of the day, there's many hard decisions to make and we'll show you
what they were, how we got there, but that level of detail, there's not enough time in the day to do that. >> Okay. >> And are you able to share the the trend information like compared to last year they were asking this, they're the spending of this, and this year they're
asking this. >> That's a good question. I actually look at five years worth of data to do it. >> Great. >> When you come in, I think it's Cookie Tested to I was with her for almost 3 hours. When you come in to meet with me and I'm presenting on the screen and I show you
what goes into what I'm doing in that forum, I could answer many more questions than I can in a public board meeting. So I I think you'll leave satisfied. Um there was mention of uh policy and
regulation 7510 which is facilities use which um >> I think Damian also had mentioned that's part of strategic planning. Just wanted to know if there's anything that I would like if you'd like to help with in terms of policy chair and policy committee
bringing that forth >> further update. I started talking I basically started talking about it at our first meeting with the >> very high level. >> Um and there's a lot of work to do on that one. Um >> so at some point we'll we'll see some
we'll do something. >> I'll be honest, there's a lot of work involved to do that. Um it's not very advantageous to the board like right now, but we want to be a good partner to the town. So there's a lot of collaboration and thought to try to be a good partner, but look out for the district at first. um first and
foremost. So, honestly, that's probably a project that's going to happen after the budget's like put together. Um and then that's kind of like on the forefront after the budget season's over. >> I think it's it's also uh a review of um
you know, the cost of renting out our spaces and whether it still makes sense for the district and what that will look like if we change it. So, it's u conversations that are still going to happen in the next couple months. Updates definitely need to be uh made and it's probably hasn't been looked at
for a little while. >> It looked like 2021. >> There hasn't been a lot of consistency in my chair either. Some of those prices, they're outdated. So, >> right 2021 was a while ago. >> We need to we need to update them. >> So, we're not winning with that right now. I'll be very honest.
>> Typically with uh policies when stress estimate tells us, oh, these are the updates by the law. We do have the department that it would go with look at it first if there's anything that they you know take a look at it before we even bring it to policy because then
I'll bring oh well you know athletics said this and there's these different choices and the reasons why they thought that the same thing would hold true with facilities would go through first the current one because there's no new one coming out with the law so it would just
be us changing our regulation is usually what it to be because that's what um the needs our fees and our structures and our pro procedures for facility use site and then it'll mina I'm going to give you the
information that you probably that you want to know in the regulation for 7510 everything we get is from stress estimate like Mr. said the rates in the regulation for 7510 are significantly outdated and that's the part that needs
to get updated that we have control. >> Right. >> No, I I get it. I'm just saying, you know, okay, I saw a policy in the OFF. Is there anything that I need to do as policy chair to make sure that we're moving that forward on? That's all. Yeah,
>> it's it's coming. >> Any other questions? Hearing none. Thank you, board member Frank Herman. And a nice segue into policy and communications committee VP Spina. Um the policy and communications
committee met virtually on Wednesday, February 18th to discuss the three policies and corresponding regulations that are up for adoption this evening. The new regulation and policy number 2535 on library materials which provides
language ensuring compliance with the passage of the freedom to read act was discussed at the January PCC meeting. Continued talks of the February meeting focused on the updates to the affiliated regulations and policies. Number 2530
pertaining to resource materials and number 9130 pertaining to public complaints which were both updated to address shared language and reference to policy number 2535. Committee members had a discussion about
the scope and intent of some language changes and the delineation of responsibilities to ensure that the guidance from the state is adhered to. It is the recommendation of the superintendent as well as the members of the policy committee that the board move
to suspend bylaw 0131 this evening for the adoption of the three affformentioned policies with one meeting only based on new legislation and the comprehensive updates provided. The remainder of the meeting time was yielded to the superintendent who
provided the committee with a comprehensive update on the current findings of the K through4 feasibility study that the district has has been engaged in. We look forward to continued updates and information throughout the spring into this deep dive into structural changes that could improve
outcomes for our youngest learners. >> Any questions? >> Any questions? Hearing none. Thank you, KP Sween Spina, sorry. Human resources committee met on Friday the I'm sorry, February 9th, 2026
virtually. The committee reviewed the draft draft personnel agenda and addressed any related questions. Administration noted that revised salary information will be incorporated in the final agenda will reflect these updates as item 4.1 in tonight's agenda.
The committee also discussed recommended adjustments for unaffiliated staff for the 2025 2026 school year based on recent contract negotiations. Historically, unaffiliated staff increases have mirrored negotiated agreements with bargaining units.
Committee also discussed implementation of the APS SMT voluntary uh sick leave bank. It was previously approved by the board. The structure was modeled after after the mtea sick bank with consideration given to whether the board or administration should serve in a
decision-making capacity to ensure efficiency while maintaining oversight. A process was discussed whereby administration will coordinate the review process and provide re relevant documentation to the committee for review and decision making. Committee
also reviewed a recommendation for a 3.5 increase for three leadership positions within the soar summer program. Soar operates as an enterprise account and is self-funded. The proposed increase has been budgeted within the soore account and would not impact general district
funds. The recommendation reflect that these positions have not received increases in several years. related to that. Additional discussion also included uh possibly providing program transportation as that is not currently um uh in use. So that is something that
will be looked at. Lastly, uh super superintendent Blackland talked about the K through K4 feasibility study. She provided updates on the study. um said that work is underway to identify essent essential budgetary needs related to potential
implementation including facilities and operational considerations. Communication with staff has begun through faculty meetings. If the district proceeds, a structured implementation committee similar to the full day kindergarten rollout would be established. Any potential change will
be targeted for the 27 2027 2028 school year, not 26 2026 2027. Any questions? >> Yes, I have a question for the soul program. How much revenue does the sole program generate over the summer?
>> Well, off the top of my head, I don't know, but if you email me uh your question, we can get back to you timely. >> Oh, okay. Um yeah I'm asking about that as you mentioned about the increase to award uh to you know thank the teachers leadership too and uh uh as we heard
last year from here I believe the public made the comments about the u math algebra 2 uh priced at 1,500 but the position filled in within 30 minutes so it seems there's a lot of student needs there and some student even say well it's because the slot is limited it's
gone immediately how can we um you know support students and support the community that's the question I want we as a together to think about that >> so just give me a synopsis of your actual question so we can the right person
>> what you want me to repeat my question >> yes your act your actual question is one is about the the revenue for last year >> yes the revenue of the uh of the sole program generated over the summer is uh last year the program filled in pretty
fast. There's a strong student needs there and uh what we going to do uh to address that needs and also associated with um that how do we address the student needs if so many student want to sign up the courses but
the limited space and also it's about equity issue too as mentioned like are all the students can't pay that 1500 >> from my understanding there are funds available for students that cannot afford to page there are establishes. >> Yes. Oh, okay.
But the Yeah, of course that and also I did hear families talk about in the summer pro in the summer time they want to value the p price prioritize the family value. So that's that too is are we able to provide that regular school
days beyond of of course offering this learning opportunity during the summer too. Any other questions? Are >> you suggesting anything u with your question? Are you saying that we need additional class in the sort program for
mathematics uh algebra? Is that what you're trying to say? So I think um for example I heard from hope well um parents um not every year um you know students who are at that ability level will have a chance to take that advanced
course but some if they're meet their at the ability level they will offer that learning opportunity with the you know next senior cohort to get it to learn um then they don't have to pay out of pocket during the summertime or uh even
though it's great to here like with school do have fund available to support students who cannot afford that. Um but also their families you know they value family time over the summer and uh if the student are ready to learn are we
able to provide that learning opportunity to our students similar to other neighboring school districts and the parents in other school district did say those learning opportunities may not you know always available for each cohort because teacher will evaluate
based on student performance that's what I mentioned in the past about the ceiling effect is not using the national percentile is using their local percentile and teachers of course they know what they're doing that's I fully trust their expertise is what I
mentioned here is the this learning opportunity if exist in other school district should we our school district also offer such a learning opportunity to support you know a student who are at that ability level >> so
>> all of is elective. Correct. >> Yeah. And I just want to clarify. So that's >> Yeah. >> If I'm reading or listening to your question correctly, that's not a a sore issue. You're talking about additional learning classes in during the school year. Is that >> Yes. >> Okay. So that's not a sore question.
That's not a HRC question. That would be ACI question. >> Oh, refer back to ACI. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions? But there's one question uh related to so program is if that position filled in so fast right
would they consider more sections then right that's related to soul program >> yes thank you >> sweet >> VP um I just wanted to to make a comment that I also uh support the idea of
having um a civic committee in the same way that we have for MTA for APSA. >> Thank you. Any other questions? >> Hearing none. We do not have any correspondence to the board. So at this time, I will entertain a motion to
adjourn to executive session. >> So second properly moved and seconded to adjourn to executive session. Any questions on the motion? Hearing none, Mr. Shell. >> All in favor?
>> I opposed abstensions. >> Say right. >> Okay. Thank you. >> We are now in executive session. We will try to debrief intervention. >> All right. At this time, I entertain a motion to reconvene and open session. >> So move second. >> Been properly moved and seconded to
reconvene and open. Yeah. in open session. Any questions on the motion? Roll call, please. Mr. Caliano. >> Dr. Wang, >> here. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Frank Herman, >> present. >> Warland, >> present. Mr. >> Nunes,
>> present. Snorgon, >> yes. >> Mr. Todd, >> yes. >> Okay. >> We have quum. At this time, I entertain a motion to approve the executive session minutes of January 27, 2026 and the business meeting minutes of January 27, 26. Is there a motion? Second.
>> Been properly moved and second to approve those minutes. Any questions on the minutes or the motion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> All those opposed. Same right. Any abstensions? Hearing none. Action agenda
items. Public comments. The board of education welcomes and encourages input from the public. Members of the public are allotted one opportunity to address the board regarding the action agenda items only for up to a maximum of three minutes per speaker. All comments must be directed to the board. Before you
make your comment, please state your full name and address and enter both on the Chromebook provided. Being mindful of privacy rights regarding students, board employees, and board members, and to avoid any liability on the part of the speaker, the board discourages defamatory and discourageous remarks. The public comment portions of the
meeting are not structured as question and answer sessions, but rather offered as opportunities for the public to share their thoughts with the board. The board may need to refer an issue to their superintendent if the issue has not been handled through the appropriate chain of command, usually served at the school level. Responses may be provided at the
end of this session. Any public comments on the action agenda items? Going once. Going twice. Public comments are now closed. At this time, I entertain a motion to adopt action agenda items 1.1 through
4.1. >> So move second. It's >> been properly moved and seconded to adopt agenda items 1.1 through 4.1. Any questions on the motion? >> What is your question?
>> Go ahead. This is for the Chromebooks and getting perfect readers. And I I just wanted to know what is that one to one LMS one to1 program. What does that mean? >> So not being like the uh person that's in charge of that building or the
technology director, I'm going to take my best shot at it. It's a a onetoone initiative for the lower middle school. And these uh these units are for anybody that's in fifth grade or starts in that building that's a fifth grade or an older student. That put you on the spot.
Was I accurate or did I miss anything? >> It uh it the students get them in fifth grade. They keep them until 8th grade >> right through middle school. >> It follows them through through the four-year program >> and then we repurpose them for testing for testing. We repurpose them for testing. Thank you very much. And so
every every year we buy the fifth grade a brand new device that follows them for four years. >> And so it creates a refresh cycle. >> And thank you so much for offering the insurance that you offer because honestly I I I I say every every parent
out there take this insurance. I have one kid that uses it every single year at least twice and then I still have to keep it. >> So that was my next question I think. So we do have uh we do make parents take the insurance >> don't make we give we give them we give
them we give them the option for low cost insurance >> $30 right >> it's uh well it it was 30 it went to 35 this year and >> we may need to adjust again next year because the tariffs drive the prices but
we we we stay competitive to other districts >> $40 still working >> yeah still working >> thank you Mr. works >> and uh white glove. What is that? >> I'm sorry. >> 7 $7.50 each
>> Chromebook. It says white glove. >> Oh, are you looking at the quotation? I don't I don't have the quotation in front of me. >> I I I can explain it. So, we we we buy the Chromebook itself. >> We buy the Google license, >> the Google Workplace license. We buy
white gloving and asset tagging. What? White glove? White glove enrollment and asset tagging is is they unbox and enter the device into our domain at their facility. They put a nice asset tag that we can scan them in and out. That's right.
>> So it's all it's all like tech business stuff. >> Okay. >> So when we get it, it's ready to go. >> Yep. >> Thank you. >> Any other question? Thank you. >> Yeah. I also have a question to that agenda item too. Um >> what number? >> The same same uh the Chromebooks. Uh yes
the the question is with this funding in I remember during pandemic Andrew mentioned was funded by federal funding right now. So after that ends right now we have to our school district have to pay out of the general fund. >> So when the RPER funding ended like a couple of years ago. Yes. Like it is
this year this year is a budgeted item. So uh and it's been it was quoted out correctly uh through a cooperative and uh it's something that we do here year after year. All the districts were fortunate enough to get that paid for through whatever you want to call it
like the American Rescue Plan is what the technical name was of like the co grant and when that expired yet if that's your initiative the taxpayers and the local buds paid for it if that money expired. So this is our first year right now comes from the general >> no that the orbaser money ended years
ago. >> Yeah. >> We only went >> that's been gone for about three this is probably like the third cycle that that's been gone. >> So basically every year we have to purchase 400 combo tablets for each
colise >> give or take. Yes. >> Like 300 and something. And then as these little ones keep moving in, it's going to be less. >> It depends on the enrollment, but like right now, like in real time, that's where we are. >> Did you find that um there was a
significant cost increase from last year to this year >> on the price of the units? >> There was. >> There was they're up about 35%. >> And that's with using the source. That's use that's with using the cooperative.
>> Yeah. That had nothing to do with us getting a higherend unit or doing anything wrong. That's with us doing it the right way. >> Can I just make a comment though? This is actually It's a great service for parents though because now you don't have to worry about getting your your child a computer, right? Correct.
Getting something that meets their needs. >> That's a cost saving. >> Exactly. You're leveraging that. So it is you're going to have to get them a computer anyway. >> It's not hey go out and get them the right type of computer. No. Here you're getting white glove the right software in it. It's good to go. You open it >> and the parents are going to pay for it either directly or indirectly. So it's
>> and there's security on it. >> Exactly. So it's it is this is it's a great service that we're offering. >> That's an excellent point. It's loaded. It has the right software. It's a durable material. >> Um and it takes the pressure off you folks of having to be responsible for doing that. So
>> that's a great point. >> And it's cheaper than you could buy it for privately. >> That's a great point. >> Well, I'm sorry. I may have a slightly different opinion towards the educational tech technology part. I just don't think like we need to send more money to educational technology company
because recently I was reading uh uh an interview from Dr. Jared Kuni Hoff he was a former teacher and turning to cognitive neuroscientist who focus on human learning. He was uh introducing he was giving a speech about when
technology enters education learning goes down and how the screen time out the time hurts kids cognitive development. And there's another uh NBC news shares report about parents are opting kids out of schoolbased
Chromebooks and iPads returning to pen and and paper. And also if you read national international news you will notice in some European countries they actually turned back turned into pencil and paper remote. We're talking about
fifth grader here. I know in Montgomery we classify them as lower middle schoolers but in most of in some other school district they're still called elementary. So they're considered elementary kids. So that's why I'm sharing like I I think there's I share
slightly different uh you know opinion on this discussion there about the Chromebook offering Chromebooks 101 for uh fifth graders. >> Thank you. I think lots of us do share that opinion though about about technology being overused in schools and needing more pen and and pencil.
Absolutely. >> But we still need them and it's still part of like modernity. >> Any other questions on the motion? >> I actually have a question prosaic question about the uh singles Chromebooks hot topic. Um it says fifth graders/new students to LMS. Does that
also include new students to seventh and eighth graders who would also need to work to one device? >> I I can explain. >> You can answer Mr. We purchase a specific model each year's fleet and as that grade moves up, these devices need to be need to be available
for them, all the people that move in to that grade. So if you So right now we're buying for the fifth graders that start in September, but we're also buying for next year's sixth graders that come into the district. The following year's seventh graders that come into the the
district. So we're actually forecasting a larger number than just our existing and then we're also buying some devices for the devices that become total fails like like total like like um total losses. So so as we don't have one student that has a different device from
the fleet. So there's there's >> and so across the grade every student has the same model. >> Correct. Correct. So if you looked at all of our eighth graders right now that that received this model in fifth grade, we bought enough to support them through the through the four years. >> Thank you for explaining that.
>> No, no problem. It's my pleasure. >> What do we do with the old Chromebooks? What do we >> So all old Chromebooks when they reach their end of life need to be recycled because they're no long they can no longer receive uh an operating system update that allows them to be secure. We
get a couple more years after they exit the eighth grade program where we use them for testing devices for our high school and also they feed our onetoone carts at our elementaryaries. So there's there's sort of a whole life to our devices.
>> Yeah. >> Thank you, Mr. Thank you for asking. >> You were meant to be here tonight. >> I will be the camera. >> Yes. Any other questions on the motion? So I know we're u make the agenda say purchase this for fifth graders. Is that
possible we defer this question to ACI saying can we you know offer this later than fifth graders to upper middle schoolers? Do we really necess is there necessary need urgent need to start for fifth graders? Can fifth graders follow
the mall learning model like fourth graders? >> Not for right now. I'm willing to this resolution is going to stay on the agenda. If you want to bring that up in ACI for the future, that's fine. >> Any other questions on the motion? >> Hearing none. Roll call, please. Mr. Shaliano.
>> Uh, before the roll call, I'm just going to make a note. Um, I emailed the board earlier. This is reflected on the public agenda on the table. Um, item 3.15. The price for that quote is $39,900. I did, if you didn't get a chance to email see the email, that's why I'm
letting everybody know right now. Any questions on that? >> And what was the original that contract was there? 75. >> Yeah, it was a typo. That's why I'm correcting it right now. >> Oh, so it's okay. That's a ceiling replacement. Would that have
>> No, that that wasn't I emailed everybody earlier. This said the $39,000 is to do DOE paperwork by the architect for Rod Grant. The ceiling was a mistake. I made the mistake. I emailed everybody earlier. I didn't see any replies back. I'm just
kind of publicly giving you the chance in case you didn't get to check your email while you were at work today. >> So 3.15 the correct number is $39,900. >> That's correct. >> And the contractor is not that PSA, right? >> Yes, it's there is two basically I received two quotes right before the
agenda. They went out. I put the wrong one. >> Thank you. Andrew, I just have one more question about the upholstery of the chairs in the auditorium. We're not we not changing all the all the chairs, right? We only repairing the
ones which are >> believe it or not, that's a staggered plan that I've worked with the director of facilities. You have a lot of chairs that are outdated and the carpet's outdated in there and we can't change them all at once. And that's only to change the upholstery on the seating
that's in really bad condition. We did it last year in the spring and I'm doing it this year and I have a little bit in the budget next year to kind of spread that across over multi-year to but to keep your like performance center like as good as we can. >> And that's something that's been
discussed for years probably since I've been home. >> Yeah. >> And Andrew, are we going to do the ceiling replacement at UNS or not at home? >> I pulled that off because I needed more details from the director operations on that. >> Okay. Gotcha. >> All right. Roll call, please. Mr.
Galiano. >> Dr. Dwine. >> So, uh, I will abstain 3.14 and yes to everything else. >> Noted. Thank you. >> Yes. >> Spina, >> yes. >> Dr. Herman, >> yes. >> Mr. Warland, >> yes.
>> Mr. Nunz, >> yes. >> Snar, >> yes. >> Mr. Todd, >> yes. >> Thank you. Motion's carried. >> Thank you. New bits is from public. The board of education welcomes and encourages input from the public. Members of the public are allowed one opportunity to bring any new business to the board for up to maximum of three
minutes per speaker. All comments must be directed to the board. Before you make your comment, please state your full name and address and enter both on the Chromebooks provided being mindful of privacy rights regarding students, board employees, and board members. And to avoid any potential liability on the part of the speaker, the board
discourages defamatory and discourteous remarks. The public comment portions of the meeting are not structured as question and answer session. The board may need to refer an issue to the superintendent if the issue has not been handled through the appropriate chain of command, usually started at the school level. Responses may be provided at the
end of this session. Any public comments? Going once, going twice. Public comments is now closed. Any closing items for board members? Uh I think I have um earlier you Julius me mentioned a good
question about the pay to full uh restruction because as we all know this whole committee basically through every committee we move committee we discussed about this topic so I'm not sure is um Mary is ready to share or you want to
hold on this topic. Yeah. >> I would like to finish more of the feasibility with the finances before we share anything. >> Okay. Thank you. Any other audience? Hearing none. At this time, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.
Second has been properly moved and second to any questions on the motion. Hearing none. All those in favor say I. Those opposions stand. Thank you for those who hung in there. We appreciate you.
>> Everybody get on safe. Thank