a that's good for e e e e e e e e e for
h good roll call m castalina m g here Dr abson Hayden here M gunman here M Morano here Mr Walsh M Zayn here you have a COR please join me in the flag
salute IED Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the repblic for it stands one nation God indivisible jce this is a public meeting of the Board of Education of the burough of New Providence adequate notice of this
meeting has been given in accordance with PL 1975 chapter 231 in that a notice was made in conformance with Section 13 of the ACT whenever the business of the board requires it to convene to close session the session will begin no later than 9:30 p.m. at the conclusion of the
need for closed session the board will reconvene to the public portion of the meeting at that time the board will complete any other business that may be before it and the public will then be given an opportunity to be heard before the meeting is adjourned so good evening everyone so
nice to have so many people in the audience tonight with us I'm going to keep my comments brief as we all have a lot to cover tonight um at the March meeting we'll be honoring our four teachers of the year but I would like to take a minute to recognize Brenda Aila BR Brandon Hil Bonnie cabasas and
Kristen Salsbury tonight for their achievements these remarkable individuals have been recognized by their peers students and parents for their dedication and excellence in teaching their commitment not only enhances our students learning experiences but also significantly
impacts our entire Community thank you for your hard work creativity and passion for Education we are proud to have you all of our you and all of our teachers and staff as part of our district collectively you all make a difference as a reminder kindergarten
and first grade reg new first grade registration for the 2526 school year is now open this process is completed entirely online the link is in the district website we encourage everyone with incoming students to complete their registration by Friday March 14th so we
can plan for the upcoming school year sufficiently as we're heading into the bidy busy season for all of our schools please take time to read the district Communications sent out on Thursdays so that you can stay updated on all that is happening around the district Dr zley
that's all I have thank you Miss kakaro at this time I'd like to welcome Mr Bobby brast for our student report thank you Dr zley good evening everyone I'm thrilled to be back to provide you with an update on the incredible achievements and successes of our students and staff at mphs over the
past month let's start with the outstanding performance of our boys and girls basketball teams at the spread the word event on February 1st where they both secured victories against Governor Livingston the event was made even more special with halftime performances by the shining stars the boys basketball team continued their winning streak with
a blackout game on February 4th which raised money to support those affected by the recent wild flowers in California the team played Milbourne tonight and they kick off the first game of the state tournament next Wednesday special kudos to the boys freshman team who which won the Union County tournament this past Monday against
Elizabeth our girls basketball team is having an incredible season boasting an impressive record of 23-2 including a win last night against Rosel Catholic in the county semi-finals they are said to compete in the Union County championship this Sunday against Westfield at Kane University in other winner Sports congratulations to both
the boys and girls swim teams on competitive Seasons our girls team Advanced all the way to the final round of the Central Jersey Group C NJ siaa tournaments just two points shy of winning the boys and girls track and field team secured spots in the group one championships on February 23rd with
Stellar performances at the central group one sectional championships Where The Boys plays third and the girls play second New Providence came home winning sectional champion in three events including Daniel predy in the 55 meter dash Sophia zanakis in the shop put and the girls 4x400 relay team of Miranda
bournique Sophia es blot Malone Henry and Libby Knight all who set his new School record the hockey team is scheduled to kick off kickoff the state tournament this Monday against Freehold Township while boys wrestling has the District tournament this Saturday girls wrestling will be competing in the regional tournament this Sunday the winter
cheering team took first place last weekend at their competition in Howell we'll be cheering them on this Sunday where they'll be competing in state championships at Brookdale Community College We wish all of our winter student athletes successful finish their Seasons we're excited for this year's spring musical Freaky Friday which will
have four performances from Thursday March 6th through Saturday March 8th the shows will be at 7:30 pm on all three evenings with the Saturday maty show at at 2m please come out to see our amazing cast crew and directors and we will certainly be some amazing
performances recently three mphs students performed in the Central Jersey music educators Association region Chorus at Monroe Township High School Sophia Scott performed with the treble chorus and Julia halderson and Rachel Zack performed with the mix course congratulations to Mr zagler and The
Talented booklists recently many of our students won Scholastic art and writing Awards mam Montero won an honorable mention in photography Mike loranda won an honorable mention in drawing Cameron better won a gold key in mixed media Adam Mo won a gold key in digital art and our first ever sculpture entry
Sophia Cadmus won an honorable mention in sculpture also Isabella DeLuca was named one of the NJ annual emerging artists as she was one of 33 students have her work displayed at Kane University this past month 17 of our students will be published in the Young Writers USA fright Club ghostly Saga
book congratulations also to our stem students who recently had great success in both the Science Olympiad and teams events and to ms's school's literary magazine per script tum which has been selected to receive the rank of distinguished in the 2024 NCT NCT
recognizing excellence in art and literary magazines realm program finally I encourage everyone to get tickets for the upcoming PTSA tricky treay fashion show which will take place on Saturday March 29th we're expecting a great event raising money for our senior class this is just a glimpse of the amazing things
happening at mphs thank you for your continued support and dedication to our Student Success thank you very much Bobby Mr yug aluro for our enrollment report good evening everyone at Allen W
Robert we C currently have 635 students at saltbrook we currently have 583 students and New Providence Middle School we currently have 394 students and New Providence High School we currently have 658 students for a total
of 2,270 students we currently have 35 students in out of District placements for a total of 2,35 students thank you um I'd just like to Echo uh some of Miss
karo's sentiments about our teachers of the year um I'd like to congratulate each of them each year the administration in each of our buildings along with Central Administration visit teacher classrooms to surprise them and let them know that they're the teacher of the year and year after year uh it
never disappoints so I would like to just congratulate all of them I'd also like to say that this is my favorite board meeting of the year for many years because this is is what it is really all about it's all about student learning and this evening it's so nice to look
out into the crowd and see so many of my colleagues who have worked so hard um as well as the students who really are presented and presented themselves so professionally so we definitely look forward to what you have to bring I'd also like to thank Mr Keeny as well as
our department heads and all of our administrators for their hard work on writing the curriculum report this evening which each board member did receive in their board packets um I'd like to just update everyone on strategic planning as uh the community knows we are in the process of strategic
planning we just completed our sixth strategic planning session and we plan to have our seventh which will be on Elementary instruction curriculum and programming on March 4th and it will be held in the awr media center so we're
very hopeful that many families will come out um it they are meant to be listening sessions so we really encourage as many parents as possible as well as teachers and students to come out because without you sharing information about where we want to head
in the next five years it becomes difficult for us to really ascertain what the community needs are so we definitely encourage you to come out without further Ado I'll pass it on to miss kakaro to begin the evening thank you Dr Zury at this time
I'd like to invite Mrs Morano and Mr Karan Ango up to present certificates of Excellence um for girls tennis check okay okay there we go um I'd like to call up the uh girls tennis team if
come on up [Applause] so the girls New Providence girls tennis team has once again demonstrated their skill and determination throughout the
season challenging themselves against top contenders in Union County they regular Aly faced highly ranked state teams including Kent Place Summit and Westfield and embracing the challenge the team focused on growth and Improvement carrying The Confidence from
their previous two state championship Seasons into every match this resolve was evident as they engaged in Fierce competitions against these formidable opponents and despite this rigorous schedule the team finished the season with an impressive overall record of 10
and seven in the state tournament they continued the momentum from last year's Squad by winning all five of their playoff matches boasting an astounding combined score of 23-2 during the stretch this remarkable performance led
to a central group one state sectional Championship highlighted by a 41 win against Highland Park ultimately the team achieved an overall state championship triumphing with a decisive 5o victory over Glenn rock at Mercer County
Park this Victory marks the sixth overall State title for the girls tennis team and their third consecutive state championship which is huge so let's let's give a round of applause for [Applause] that additionally this achievement
brings the team's total to 12 sectional titles with eight secured in the last nine Seasons congratulations yes [Applause] congratulations to all the players and coaches on a spectacular conclusion to
yet another historic season your team has truly become historic and marked your place in New Providence High School history yeah yeah [Laughter] additionally we want to highlight one other player who looks very nervous
so GI Culver was awarded individual honors this season as she was crowned Union County champion gior won the third singles flight Title by defeating second seated Kira baa from Summit 6263 congratulations
[Applause] GI thank you at this time I would like to welcome Dr uh Mr Jonathan Keeny director of curriculum instruction and supervision uh to present the curriculum report I'll take doctor
[Laughter] elevating we had some wonderly wonderfully enthusiastic response to the tennis team so feel free during this presentation if anything particularly takes your fancy to Roop it up as well good
evening tonight I'd like to take you on a journey a journey through for schools across 12 grade levels and as we take that Journey we will see how our curriculum our instruction and our
programming is addressing our mission statement and our portrait of a graduate and all the important component parts contained there within I think it's also important as we come towards the end of vision
2025 as we come towards the end of our five years of strategic planning and the goals that we came up with but we look at how our curriculum programming and instruction addresses these goals how the programs that we have and the
curriculum and the instruction that we provide allows us to address the important component parts you'll see tonight some examples of how we enhance Elementary scho uh student programming you'll see examples of how we enhance our secondary student
programming you'll see some examples of how we Implement social and emotional learning hopefully you'll be able to put this together and you'll see that we have our modern learning environment and from the instructional methodologies that we talk about you'll see that we
have have been implementing Innovative collaborative and modernized instructional framework those are our goals five years ago those are the goals we have moved towards those are the goals I believe we have accomplished and tonight I'd like to show you how we've done some of that
so just a little bit of warning a word of warning for you um there's been a bit of flu going around and there was a stomach bug so over the course of the last three days as we started to practice this we had some people who practiced on Tuesday who are no longer in school we had some people who
therefore couldn't practice on Tuesday and Wednesday and only practice today so I just I'm just going to introduce that to you I appreciate your patience and your understanding as we move forward it might not go quite as smoothly as I would like but we are we are working with students so let's start at the k6
level we'll start with saltbrook and Alan W Roberts I'd like to introduce and invite up to the front Kathy Yanni who is the counselor between two schools saltbrook and Roberts and also Phoebe
and Bennett our first grade students [Applause] f with slides for you um sure if you don't mind thank you okay good evening everyone thank you for having us here um as you may or may
not know the elementary school counselors visit all classes from K to four um every single month where we talk about differental topics and the first topic that we always focus on is self s awareness and over the summer we had a
wonderful Workshop where we talked about community and belonging and I couldn't help but think about such a huge part of community and belonging is our identity who who we identify as and that starts with our name as simple as that uh so we
decided to put together an activity for our social emotional Learning lesson the first one for first grade this year and we focused on our names and we did that um by focusing on a special book but before we get into the book I want to
make sure that you have a chance to meet my special friends up here with me so I am Mrs kathani I'm a shared counselor as Mr key mentioned and we have here Pho and and
Bennett thank you guys my very special guests okay so if we take a look here on the slide you'll see a picture of the book that we focused on called Alma and how she got her name I'm going to ask my special guests to hand a few of these
copies out um Phoebe why don't you take a few can you bring them to this side of the room and Bennett let's see oh we we're gonna pass it around take one take a look and you can pass it around to
some of our special friends here okay this is a very special book uh focuses on a main character her name is Alma but that's not her only name she has many names in her name and she feels like her name doesn't fit and her dad works really hard to help her understand that
her name is very special and every name um was given to her for a reason so what we decided to do was create a homeschool connection where all parents in first grade were surveyed and asked about their children's names they were asked
two questions what is your child's name and why did you choose that name so it was a great way to start this activity then we did a read aloud in class of this story where students got to learn the very long name of Alma Alma Sophia
esparanza Jose Pura Candela and you can see why she sometimes felt like her name didn't fit um but as I mentioned her dad helped her realize that she does fit and she belongs and finally we use the information from the surveys that we did
uh with parents for students to do crosss in the classroom so they took the information they learned from their parents and created a craft and some students chose to Simply share why they love their name so let's find out what Phoebe and Bennett learned about their
names let's start here with Phoebe my name is Phoebe and the first letter of my name is p the P comes from my f from my great grandma sowy's name Pauline my middle name is
jacn and the first letter of my middle name is j the J comes from my great grandma bass is nam Jean my parents followed a family tradition of naming a newborn baby with the first letter of a loved one who has
passed away Phoebe jacn is a combination of my mom's paternal grandma grandmother and my dad's paternal grandmother thank you so much for sharing that BB now let's learn about Bennett's
name my name is Bennett tree kman and I am half Indian she is a strong Indian male name I learned that my parents pick this name because of it's the F because it's the first two letters of my their names
together sha and rich thank you [Applause] ni job Phoebe and Bennett beautifully said beautifully said so as you can see Phoebe and Bennett learned really special things about their name and so did other first graders they learned
that their names honor family cultural and historical figures they all have special meaning and they were chosen just for them and finally we realize that everyone's name is special and no matter how long it is how we pronounce
it or what it means we all belong and everyone's name fits so thank you so much for having us tonight and special thank you to phebe and Ben and their families for coming out tonight we appreciate it thank you very much indeed that's
tremendous and I'd like to commend Miss Yani just for doing something so simple such a simple little technique for students to find out the meaning of their names and then to feel like they belong and I also I'd like to commend missani for for reaching out to the families to start those home family
connections very early in first grade okay so thank you Miss Yanni okay disappointed we didn't get any whoops in there for the names but we'll work on it okay so I'd like to introduce you now to our third grade math and language arts
programs and give you some information about those and I'd like to invite up Miss Britney Hep teacher who's been been with us for seven years who worked at saltbrook in the uh in the third grade and he's one of our seasoned professionals excellent
teacher she asked me can I teach the board some math why not so what Miss Hep is going to do is do a little activity with the board which is going to illustrate for us the very Hands-On mathematical
process that the I ready program provides okay the I ready program is part of a blended learning program that we use where there's a lot of face-to-face interactions and conversations with the students then supplemented by some of the technology that we'll talk about a little bit later
okay so miss Hep very seasoned very professional very good at this is going to lead the board through a math lesson you should have at your tables the appropriate equipment okay and she going to model what happens in the I ready math classroom at the third grade level
good luck thank you so the try disc connect um routine is really the Cornerstone of the I ready program and this is how we launch the math lessons each day and it is really an opportunity to go through one program one problem
and have students um have time for thinking problem solving partner talk and whole class discourse so today I'm going to go through a very abbreviated version of the um multiplying to find area less
typically this part the try connect discuss can take 20 minutes because we're really building a lot of that time discussing and challenging some um some of the concepts but today we'll keep it short all right first try it we are
going to make sense of the problem the problem is what is the area of the rectangle so we would read the problem a few times we'd ask some questions to really make sure students are making sense of the problem in front of them the next part of the try it is to
actually try it so I'm going to now ask you you have math Tools in front of you you have graph paper you have a recording sheet I'd like for you to use any strategy that you'd like any strategy you're comfortable with um to try and solve this problem and support
your thinking by showing your work on your on your board I'll give you about 30 seconds usually more like five minutes but I think you guys can do it yes so during the lesson as I've observed Miss Hep doing
on a few occasions the teachers are wandering around they're looking at how the students are working that's excellent okay looking at how they're solving that problem collecting information gathering data okay figuring out how the students are actually
performing right and this is not a time that we really we will ask questions if needed but really this is the time for the students to Think Through the problem and try a strategy that might work best for them so after we have tried a strategy our next step is to
discuss so I'm going to ask you to turn to a neighbor and please discuss the strategy that you used the steps that you took and if you're listening to your partner be sure to listen for any similarities or differences between your strategies go ahead
very nice think I see some similar strategies great and at this point we are going to um discuss it as a class so we would share some work on the board Mr youu I understand you have a strategy that you'd like to share with
us so I can see from your work that you drew an array of two rows of four and then you count counted the squares to find a total area of eight square centimeters perfect can you show me a
same students if you used a similar strategy of counting the squares very nice okay I can see this is some higher level thinking you've got here very nice job Mr
yo so following the share with the class we um we continue to share some other strategies whoops thank you um and this really exposes students to different strategies they may find some strategies they might feel comfortable trying out
when they're working independently um and they may see some strategies they hadn't thought of before so here are some other examples of of uh work you might see from students the final stage is the connected phase and at this point we really connect the strategies and the
learning to what's in the workbook and we um ask them further questions to deepen their understanding and as you can see through the appropriately named triy it discuss it connected program this is a program that really involves a
lot of discussion a lot of face- tof Face Time and because of that we really work to build some of these routines at the beginning of the year building those sentence starters um reinforcing um positive uh respectful conversations and then we can reinforce that throughout
the year um because it is such a big component of the program and so far it's been great in building confidence building communication skills and really deepening their understanding of the math concepts so thank you Miss he and we are lucky to have some third
graders here today to talk about how we're using AI in the classroom [Applause] so as we we talked about the at the start of this school year we spent quite a lot of time last year trying to be
proactive with regards to the implementation of AI artificial intelligence was everywhere so last year we spent quite a bit of time Mr chrisella Miss Kowski at the back there we started to put together guidelines for the use of AI then we put together a policy over the summer which the board
accepted um because we really wanted to make sure that AI which is every and upand coming was used in a respectful ethical controlled manner in our school district so we provided a lot of training for our staff at the start of the school year and then our staff have
started to solely Implement AI into their instruction with different sets of students so we're lucky to have with us today two brilliant third graders okay who are going to show us how they used AI in the classroom to help with their
studies are we ready thumbs up yeah y okay good I'm Mason my first mistake of the night I'm Mason I'm CA we're working on persuasive writing we brainstorm big
bold thesis statements in our class to for a change we want to see or someone we want to recognize for example students need more time for recess some time something I really care about then we had time to
Brainstorm by ourselves and then in groups here are some examples we came up with it gives us more exercise it gives us time to practice sports and it gives us a chance to be with friends after brainstorming by ourselves
and in our groups we use Magic School AI to build on our reasons we used the idea generator app selected third grade and typed in a specific prompt like reasons why we should have more time for recess reasons why we should have a class pet
reasons School custodians are so important and then presso more ideas the app helped us build on our ideas with examples like helping students relax which helps us focus in class and build
friendship and teamwork some other ways we are using AI in our classroom include we use it to add more descriptive language when revising our narrative Lang writing we also use it to help write thank you
notes to people in our school and Community we also use it to get book recommendations here are some pictures of us working hard on our assignments first we work on our own and then we get
into groups and then we tell our partners what we were going to do and then it's cool that our walls are magnetic so then we can hook our iPads up to the wall and then we can ride on our piece of paper and collaborate with
our friends thank you for your time [Applause] thank you so very very much that was wonderful excellent the way you were
talking without using your notes the way you said Presto that was great stuff so well done another round of [Applause] applause so I think it's important that I think you saw from what we just what we just uh that lesson you just saw
there how AI is being used as a think partner okay it's to help our students we emphasize there the students do the individual work first they then will collaborate with each other generate ideas and at this point then we could bring in some AI to help them either
clarify their ideas or introduce new ideas to help them but they do all the work first they are carrying the cognitive load and the AI is then helping them a little bit you know towards the end of that I think that's important that's that was part of the all the guidelines that we introduced
and all the training that we provided for the students for the teachers during the summer so thank you Britney for introducing that into your classroom so you saw with the math some of the the systems that are in play some of the processes that we use for student
interaction for student discussion there is also another component of I ready which is the diagnostic tool technology component which does provide us with quite a lot of information so I've asked Michelle and Jackie our k through6 math supervisor and our K through6 language
arts supervisor just to give us a quick overview of how the data that we collect from our already diagnostic tests they seem to be a bit nervous would you like to come up okay and the data they provide which helps with teachers with their
instruction thank you good evening thank you so with the lesson that you saw today that Mrs T slip did uh was a beginning lesson at the beginning of a unit um on area and before prior to a
unit a teacher will pull a prerequisite report this prerequisite report pulls off of the data from the diagnostic report and gives the teacher a snapshot on what students are ready for that learning so I pulled Mrs he lip's diag
our prerequisite report here and in the green we see that there are 15 students that were ready for that learning objective we see there was one student in that green yellow shaded area that may need some additional support in that
lesson and one student who was in the red that student happens to be Michelle Testa um so who might need some really intensive support prior to going into that lesson and so this really allows
our teachers to differentiate and do some prerequisite report before they teach that concept it's a really great resource um and this is pulled off of that diagnostic report that we do three times a year I'm gonna hand it over to my friend
Jackie Kaufman thank you all right good evening everybody so in addition to using the um I ready Diagnostic in math we are also using it this year for the first time in language arts k6 and so teachers are given um a couple of different reports that we can
use to help Drive our instruction and really help personalize our learning uh one of them is called reading buddies and the idea behind reading buddies is that it places students in supportive mixed ability Partnerships um so that students will then um support each other
um as they're reading together um the idea here is to build a reading fluency um if you look up at the top for it says a first grade class versus a third grade class so different teachers might see different types of data depending on the reading abilities in their class so you'll notice in a first
grade class it says 13 students um are paired they're ready to be in these in Reading buddies together and you'll notice that five students um still need teacher support so they're not quite yet ready yet to be uh partnered together versus in a third grade class um in this
particular class all 17 students are ready to be partnered together for this activity um teachers would click on that and then they would see something like this um as you can see the the mixed abilities are partnered together and this is just one way that we can differentiate and personalize our
learning um in the language arts department um another piece of data that we are given from the diagnostic gives teachers a lot of insight into how students are doing in specific reading domains so you can see here across the top um this would be a sample fourth grade report this so this is just a
snapshot of six students in the class and you can see um as you go across there are six six different headings um the first one being phological awareness phonics high frequency words vocab literature comprehension and information comprehension for those of you like
myself who are more visual Learners and this is the list of U reading domains you would see and this just really oh no I went the wrong way there we go I figured it out um this is very helpful for teachers to just to
see where students um are land ing in a certain time in the year and to help us plan our instruction and really personalize it thank you so [Applause] much so just to connect to what we've
done already in Miss he slip's class that data may be used to determine which students sit together for the connect for the try connect and try discuss and connect um strategy so it's tremendously important information tremendously
useful so that we can really Target instruction as needed to our students okay that's just one piece of data we all know that student performance is assessed by a whole variety of different pieces of data which is why we are looking at a data platform system a data
management system that we're hoping to implement in the school district where we can collect all the data that we have on our students and easily access that so we can make better decisions about how to Pro for our programming for instruction Etc I hope by this time next
year to be standing before you and giving you some examples of how we've used that with its implementation so stay tuned so we've made our way through K through six we've made our way through saltbrook we've made our way through Roberts let's have a look at what's going on in the
middle school I think it's also it's it's always nice to see how strategies that are used at one level are then implemented at a different level so we're going to go from third grade into the middle school and we're going to look a little bit again about AI but how
it's used in a different way to help students with their writing and with their learning so I'm going to introduce to you and ask to come up Mr Russell Anderson our eighth grade social social studies teacher and two of his [Applause]
students here I gota be honest the story graders are a tough act to follow um so I'm obviously very excited to to be here today to discuss how we're using Magic School AI in our social studies classroom um most recently we
did an assignment that's called the DBQ which stands for document based questions the topic that we had was the presidency of Andrew Jackson and ultimately the goal that we have of this assignment is to Target writing skills uh these skills that are necessary for high school social studies things like
uh argumentation Source anal analysis evidence-based writing um it also coincides with a lot of things we try to do with facilitating writing goals for ELA so dbqs are something we use at the middle school level uh as well as the high school level um so what I'm going to do is I'm going to pass the
microphone off to uh swar here is's gonna explain kind of what this DBQ looks like hi my name is sare in this DBQ we answered the essential question if Andrew Jackson was a more democratic or authoritarian leader for this DBQ we were given a variety of primary
secondary sources we were given a political cartoon Andrew Jackson's state of un address as well as many other sources using all this information we were tasked come with a five paragraph response that includes a thesis evidence and thesis a thesis and
evidence and personal analysis every student has the ability to argue this one way or another thank you swart uh so what you see up here on the top left is a rubric that I would use to grade uh student dbqs and so we can take
that rubric and you can customize it using the writing feedback tool on the Magic School Ai and what it will do is give students that immediate feedback strengths and weaknesses and so usually I'd have a pile of 80 to 100 DBQ five paragraph essays and I promise I get to
them as quickly as I can um but what this does is gives student that immediate feedback for growth um and what I like about the Magic School AI tool is that it is teacher controlled it is teacher contained and teachers can customize it to focus on exactly what it is they're trying to Target um and like
it says there you can find overall writing feedback or if you want to find something specific and most importantly it's not intended to grade students work so uh I'm going to pass it off again here to Luke and he's G to give you a little example of what it's like on his
end hello I'm luuk Rios I worked on the DBQ in Mr Anderson's class and we use Magic School AI in order to improve our responses Magic School AI is really easy to use all you have to do is copy and paste your response and put it in like the prompted area and from there you get
simple and easy to understand feedback uh immediately it gives certain areas you can improve upon such as an example of this would be it told me that I could strengthen my counterargument and it would show uh deeper knowledge of the evidence as well as creative thinking
and it also gives positive motivation to kind of help you uh improve and an example of this would be it told me out a strong thesis statement overall uh the AI was very helpful and helped me grow as a writer thank you
Luke uh so on my end of things when I you know students submit their uh five paragraph essays uh it helps the teacher in leveling future activities if you notice that you know you quickly get that feedback and you can see you know you have X number of students who have
really strong thesis statements but perhaps need to work on some of the you know document-based uh analysis features of it or if they need to work on evidence-based writing it gives you that feedback so in future lessons you can section off your students and and allow them to grow where they need to grow um
it also it monitors engagement levels with their writing so you can see or nudge students as as needed and what I really like about this it gives that further objective feedback and if you know most of you been in school have those teachers who give that objective feedback over and over and over again
sometimes it hits sometimes you know you got to keep working on it but with students relationship with AI it is very objective in that it's giving them really uh specific areas for growth and so here's an example of what you would get with your 80 to 100 students you go
down a list you can see engagement levels uh it's specifically points out there that you know you have um really strong areas in thesis statements or need to improve with c argument so this immediate feedback gives the the students the opportunity uh to grow and
and by having that I think um it's shown success in social studies and for myself and I know other teachers who are using it it has shown that they are able to use it to help themselves grow and help their students grow so thank you so much go
[Applause] Pioneers a few things Mr said there again it's the think partner all the research suggests that the quicker and the sooner you get feedback on your work the more learning that takes place so
this enables immediate feedback on writing Mr Anderson then within a couple of days as he stated grades and hands that back as well so now you've got a combination of feedback from Mr Anderson immediate feedback which is going to en
enhance the learning from Ai and together they come together excellent use of think partner excellent use of for Teacher productivity and excellent use for student feedback so comes together very nicely with regards to that so we're lucky to be able to do that and fair play to you Mr Anderson
for doing that you know you saw what Miss Hep this does with her students at the third grade level some of our students some of our teachers have really taken AI on board and started to modify and adjust it to best suit their needs of their students and that's a wonderful example so thank you Mr
Anderson so would you excuse me for a moment if I give you a little bit of a history lesson okay one of the Board of Education sub goals has been to expand Middle School electives some of you may recognize this
diagram thumbs up if you recognize this diagram yeah burn Dr Zury Amanda Joe Miss no okay so back in 2016 as we were putting our stem program together we decided it would be a good idea to to kind of get an idea of exactly where uh
we wanted our students to be and what we want to do with them so we came up with some ideas for K through four we were the first school I think in Union County maybe one of the first school in the state to have dedicated K through six stem teachers with stem programs in
place we wanted five through eight levels continual awareness of that in the stem fields and more rigorous challenges and then as we moved up to the the high school we were looking for some more rigorous in-depth opportunities for our students and we introduced The Project Lead the Way
program which really provide a tremendous amount of handson career orientated inquiry based Discovery courses for students to enter and that they were met with great success one of the things we were always trying to work
on was what was happening in the middle school and with a new Middle School schedule and the extended period of time now for the lessons we've been able to introduce into the middle school some Project Lead the Way courses
okay thank you Mrs Z okay Mrs Z was heavily involved in the stem program back in 2015 2016 if I remember rightly a lot of the um the funding not a lot of the funding a lot of the um the equipment for these programs was provided by the Ed
Foundation okay which is TR tremendous they were fundamental in providing us with a lot of the equipment that we used during our stem um stem Explorations so tonight I'd like to talk and introduce to you a talk about and introduce to you Ashley Ashton sorry and aad to come up
to the front we were lucky to get Miss Miss p uh applied for and we were lucky to receive a grant which then provided us the funding for these Project Lead the Way courses um so I'd like you to to be introduced to the one we've got at eighth grade now Automation and Robotics
We Ready gentlemen sure yeah okay great do you want this yeah yeah uh good evening my name is Ashton Green my name is e Shamy and we're excited to share to you our experience in the pltw robotics
course this Hands-On program introduces us to engineering coding and mechanical systems we will walk you through what we've learned and showcase some of our projects one key part of the course is our engineering and designing notebook where
we document our sketches test results and Reflections just like real Engineers we also apply programming skills from seventh grade using Loops conditionals and event handlers to control our robots finally we explore mechanical systems like gears and pulley to design working
machines throughout the course we worked on several Hands-On projects we started building simple mechanisms like gears train TRS and program them to move later we we use sensors such as Optical and distance sensors to create automated
systems some of the projects we designed over the course were a pet toy that moves randomly to keep pets active a spinning street sign that alerts drivers to slow down and a dragster program for maximum speed using precise gear ratios
here's ashon green during the robotics course we were tasked with building a final project that was based off real world problems uh me and my group chose to make a to make a conveyor belt like the one
here for the factory timu to op to optimize efficiency while minimizing human error here what we did was we programmed what we call the brain to make the motor spin which caused the whole thing to spin the goal of this was to simulate how a real world conveyor
would work and just to mimic how Engineers work with like the engineering notebook and as team uh we didn't only learn how to code robots and build things we also worked on teamwork skills real world connections and we also learned about
future stem careers and things that and can help you with the high school college and future [Applause] careers [Applause] than we just like to commend our four Middle School schol students sitting in
the front here we [Applause] practiced want to stand up and take a bow no they came in and practiced on Tuesday after school they came in and practiced on Wednesday after school I went into their classrooms and they were
practicing in their classrooms and they did work with Mr Anderson as well and Miss ponia to to make sure that they knew what they were talking about so brilliant job gentlemen well done [Applause] so we've been through our elementary
school we've been through our middle school now it's time for us to have a look at what's going on in our high school one of the things we've worked very hard with at the high school recently is the choice of electives that we can provide for our students so I want I wanted to introduce to you
tonight a whole range of different electives three in all which our students are going to talk about which provide students with a lot of different opportunities Within course sequences to experiment and to be exposed to a number of different things so first of all I'd like to introduce
you to Wellness fed I'd like to ask Miss halpen to come up and Isabella who are going to talk to you about the wellness fed program that we [Applause] have thank
you just just in case okay um so it's great to be here Mr Keeny talked about the kids coming into practice that was me three days in a row it was yes it really was so I
apologize ahead of time all right so my name is Melissa hurn and I am a fit teacher here at the high school and I am here to talk about the wellness PE class it is a brand new class to the high school this is our second year we offer it to 10th 11th and 12th graders
um Isabella is with me as a 12th grader she's going to speak in just a minute um but I just wanted to talk about this nontraditional fizzed class that enhances the overall Wellness by not having any team sport or individual
sport through the entire school year um if you have a look up here I mean there's something for everybody I'm sure some of you are looking and be like yeah I do that yeah oh I hate that um and you know everybody likes something up
there and as a small group you know we're able to kind of find what everybody likes and they'll all find their Niche ideally I mean I love the Tabata I don't know if you know what that is but it's it's really great um
one way that we try to um incorporate some of these is through a platform app and I'm going to show you that we you were given the platform app I don't know how to do that dark circle thing but the
the New Providence Ed foundation and it has been really great so thank you for that um the platform app is great because it's individualized learning it lets the students Pace themselves and there really is a lot of choice for them
so if you look up here this is this is one page of the choices that students have so we have so far in the the past two years used the
dance yes we've used the dance one the intro to Fitness intro to strength training uh kickboxing uh We've and the yoga as well this year we went a different way with the yoga um which I'll talk about in oh
look look at that segue okay so we are now in the third unit so we had strength training unit one marking period two we did cardiovascular so we did a bunch of
those hit and toada and we were working hard um and the third now is what we would call overall wellness and the first part of it is Yoga so you could see the kids in lizard POS and you know
the like a pretzel sometimes but um this has been great so far um it for me it sees them relax disconnect a little bit from the stresses of their everyday life
which we all have so through yoga poses uh breath work which is new to most of them um and a little bit of relaxation at the end we've really felt like it's
something we like so I like it too so what I'm going to do is I'm going to pass it over to Isabella because she has been with me uh for the first time as a 12th grader so I'm going to let her give a little bit of feedback thank you Miss hurn uh I just
want to start off by talking about why I decided to take the wellness PE course um team sports and like traditional gym class aren't really my thing and it's not something I really enjoy um and so I heard about this class through guidance
and I decided that it would be a good opportunity for me to improve my personal physical and mental health during our weight training um unit we learned how to make workout splits and um you know like build muscle get physically fit and we also um focus on
our mental health at the beginning of most of our classes we used um these cards that would ask us questions about how we're feeling feeling um what's going on in our lives and like some goals and aspirations and we also made these booklets um that have a bunch of
positive affirmations in them um and I even put some like blank cards in the back of mine so I could write new ones as I came up with them and I still use that book to this day um and the class has really just helped me improve my my personal health and uh gain confidence thank you so again I'm just
going to CL with the wellness uh PE being a non-traditional non-sport uh physical uh you know activity working on the total person uh and ideally producing happy healthy active students
that they learn the skills and the tools to be healthy today tomorrow and throughout the rest of their life thank you thank you Miss Halen and I'm just going to embarrass Miss halpen just a little bit Miss halpin's daughter plays on the
US national soccer team and today because I've seen the video she scored her first goal for the US national team at a tournament in Spain okay which Miss Halen wanted to go to but but I would not let her because she had to
present tonight so thank you Miss halpen okay we talked about Wellness fed okay I'd also like to introduce you to a uh an elective called marketing and one of the Board of Education sub goals over the course of the last five years was to experiment and consider different
electives in business we now have economics AP economics we have financial literacy as an elect Ive we have entrepreneurship as an elective and now we've introduced marketing as an elective so we've really built up that business strand so students have a lot
of opportunities if they're thinking about going into business to experiment and to to do some courses which helps them discover some of the things that they they may want to go into so I'd like to introduce to you and invite up to the stage tonight Wendy Mard the teacher for this course and Miriam who
is going to talk to us a little bit about her marketing plan [Applause] well that makes me feel extremely unathletic and old and inflexible so thank you for that very much um yes so
marketing is also in its second year it's a new elective the primary purpose is to kind of Infuse authentic learning okay into students curriculum so that they have the ability to understand about you know real life and paying bills and things Beyond the Wall s um of Academia um also we wanted this year to
spend more time integrating the New Providence business community so really strengthen the bonds of the people who are in the community and what kind of feedback what can they bring to our students to make that experience even more authentic okay and we have for you a video a montage okay so just about the
sound oh yeah so the sound might be a little bit fuzzy just because we had a significant number of people talking at the same time so it's great visually let's go with so here we have our students presenting to members of
Fant really comk research slides and really you know receiver of she knows but then the
regular Starbucks so I us beautiful okay so as you can see MMA was already um featured in the video she was looking at herself like is that really me so now I'm going to give her the chance to talk to you about her business and her experience that she went through
uh thank you so much um my business that I created in the marketing elective it was misto so msto is a coffee subscription that um sends you either coffee beans pods monthly based on your machine so the whole reason that we are different
from the other um stereotypical companies that you would know of like lavasa cure egg and espresso is because of AI and recommendation that we would use in our platform in the way that we would be more visually pleasing user friendly so I put a lot of effort into
my consumer analysis and pricing um so I found a couple of averages I made out a like an infographic and laid it out as well as the monthly disposable income to find where to put my price at um this is just another example of the market research that I put in um
showing comparisons of each brand and type and Etc um this is more of the analysis just to show how much work was really put in to find the exact pinpoint that I would need for that price more with kg and lavat um so I put a lot of effort in uh
not well yeah there was um our value proposition was just to be an alternative that would um be more user friendly where our users would actually want want to go to this and see that our website was a lot more compatible and that they would be able to use it so
easily um and so creating the project um market analysis was a huge thing with this we wanted to see what our other competitors were doing um what I would have to do to compete with them and overall how I would have to make a successful business pricing data and
understanding were all things that contribute contrib contributed contributed to this um and presenting really helped put it all together so a lot of the feedback that I got from the professionals that we presented to really helped as I moved along with the
present presentations so each time that I got feedback throughout my presentation uh I would add on to something for the next presentation and then continue going through that process so I build each time and then incorporate that into my next presentation um so some of the feedback
that I got from some of the panelists um one of my my favorites was the center one oh I know how to do the spotlight thing so um excellent to see Miriam's analysis included an actionable Insight that informed her business strategy I really liked that one because I did put
a lot of effort into my analysis and the price point and so that really um I was just happy to hear that somebody actually realized [Applause] that and definitely I know she stressed this but just how impressive it was that
students started with this information and they were expected as kind of ass summative to create a viable business and one that had a complete marketing plan so they started from a ground job so really was an impressive amount of work to be honest and then this is overall feedback that we got from the
business Community um see I can do it too um and over here you can see really the how impressed they were with the quality of the presentations how articulate the students were and then you know personally as a teacher loving that they clearly have an excellent
foundational knowledge of key Marketing Concept so as a teacher I was like right on um and then that last part which was so great um as M said having the ability for the students to build um each time they got feedback it improved their presentation it improved their business
plan itself and then certainly the marketing piece of it and we really wanted to Tada thank we had so many people come out sometimes they came multiple days so really thank you to anyone from the community who offered their time to help Mentor the students and give that feedback it really made a
huge difference in terms of making this like a truly authentic learning experience and we look forward to continuing our partnership going forward [Applause] thank you very much indeed to Wendy and to Miriam there again I'd like to
commend Wendy for as she was emphasizing at the end there the real world authentic experience we're providing for our students suggesting to them strategies they can use in their career if they decide to go in that direction but the authenticity and then getting feedback
from members of the community in those areas is a tremendously powerful Fe piece of feedback for our students so well done Wendy and thank you Miriam tremendous all right last one biomedical engineering biomedical engineering is a
course I used to teach um and I must admit having looked at some of these presentations that you'll see shortly um it's Advanced tremendously since I taught it four or five years ago so we do have a um variety of students who are coming up today who're going to talk
again about the authentic projects that they had to do okay we're going to stand in order yeah we're in order good so bi biomechanical engineering you may remember back in September some of these students were standing up here because they've been to
the TSA competition down in Orlando Orlando and come back with tremendous prizes and I I got a couple of questions afterwards and Miss pit as well saying like how do you how do you prepare the students for these sort of competitions well it's these sort of courses that you're going to see now and those
Robotics and automation courses you see in the middle school that really build year after year on their stem skills their expiration skills their problem soling solving skills their critical thinking skills so by the time they get to be seniors they really have a very
very strong foundation in those okay are we ready okay four biomedical engineering projects from this yeah hello my name is Brandon M I'm a senior in the biomedical engineering class and uh I'm going to present to you the first project we did of the year
which was to close out our science engineering and ethics unit I know how to do the spotlight thing too uh the goal of this project was to create a proof of concept for a drug delivery system which would be uh whiffle ball modeling a pill and Kool-Aid modeling drugs to go in the
pill and then to have that pill release the drug between 5 and 10 hours which our model was 5 and 10 minutes the materials we had to use were uh Ziploc bags Scotch tape diapers things to cover our whiffle ball and allow it to release the drug
over time rather than all at once my specific project is over here and uh I covered it in tape and then put it in a Ziploc bag that I cut small slits in four small slits to allow water to come in and seep into the whiffle ball over time and release the
drug then after we did multiple iterations of it I started with eight holes then six then for to get the perfect amount of time we presented this to our class with like an elevator pitch in front of the classes with my partner and to close that our you know we documented it all on engineering notebooks just like Engineers would do
I'll pass it over to J sweet it worked okay U hi my name is j Eduardo a senior at uh New Providence High School and for my uh midterm project in biomedical engineering I chose to model a uh micro pacemaker uh
so in our biomedical instrumentation unit uh we learned about uh pacemakers and the main problem with pacemakers is that they are um the surgery for them can be highly invasive and um it's somewhat dangerous uh so my solution was
to basically uh downsize the uh pace maker as we learned we could do in the nanoscience unit uh I also used forces from the Nano Nano science unit such as magnetism and intermolecular forces so um the tube uh represents the uh um
blood flow flowing to the heart which is the wine jug and then uh the magnets represent the magnetic force that I'd be uh using for the uh pacemaker so ultimately I did not achieve my goal uh the concept is still viable though uh
just in my particular experiment it didn't go as planned um however if I were to uh do this again I would learn from my mistakes and obviously given more time and you know funding I could uh make this reality so envirom metical engineering
we all learn a little differently as you'll see shortly ROM likes using AI models I obviously prefer the uh physical models um and by us all being encouraged to uh learn differently uh we all get excited about the um materials
we're learning and uh since we're not uh penalized for thinking outside of the box uh it actually helps us learn a lot more passing it off to Magie [Music] [Applause] Lou so my name is Maggie Lou I'm a
junior at new Provence high school and this is my midterm project which was to design an integrated MPS system um if you're wondering what an MPS is it stands for micr physiolog iCal system but another nickname for it is an organ on a chip so what organ on a chips are
is you take stem cells from live Human tissue and you implement it into a chip and this helps with drug uh testing drugs and drug efficacy in the medical field so um for the use of AI in my project I use Magic School AI to help me decide between an annotated bibliography
or an engineering concept um which were the two options we had for our midterm and I CH chose an engineering concept um I did some further research and I found that the limitations of the current system was that um there's too much focus on single organ tissues and also
lack of nerve complexity so um over here this is a current picture of a modern day MPS it literally looks like a chip and inside you implement the human tissues um so using this research I designed my own engineering concept to
like tackle these two issues um which is right over here and um over here you can see the different hubs which will house a different multi-organs and underneath you have red and green layers to simulate the human body with blood circulation and also nerve wires so um
yeah passing off to ROM thank you uh my name is Rah I'm a junior and this is like my first ever time going into like biomedical engineering at all and it was like a really interesting experience because we really got to try a lot of different things especially like in the AI unit um
during this time and my team decided that we wanted to create an artificial intelligence model to tackle um like decoding American sign language which like a lot of people can't interpret that like it would really help to bridge the gap between those that are dependent on it and those that don't understand it
at all so the way we actually did this was using like a 90,000 image data set from uh a website called kaggle and we essentially put it through the algorithm which you can like see like the base code over here and put very simply it takes like a 3X3 of um like our 128
pixel x 128 pixel image and it goes through that diagram yeah and by doing that we essentially got like an accuracy of 92% over 10 epochs an Epoch is just one full run through and that's why like you see it getting better over time and the L graph is just very simply it's our
predicted accuracy over its actual accuracy and the model predicts that it'll do very well off like off the GetGo and you can see it's like completely wrong but over over time it gets closer and closer to zero which is um better for the accuracy of our model and basically by doing that we can put in images like the CN o you see here and
get a certain amount of like Confidence from the model itself on what each letter actually does um most of our team didn't have a lot of experience with AI before this so doing this really helped us learn a lot about um like how to make a model and what like that code actually
means because if you showed that to us like before this year started we would not be able to tell you what it was so yeah that's any questions if you had trouble understanding that I noce a few people
in the front like like that it's understandable this is you know this is what we wanted to show we want to illustrate we started with reading in first grade and we progressed systematically through a variety of different things up to some complicated
stuff as seniors which I don't understand and I taught the course before so congratulations ladies and gentlemen that was wonderful thank [Applause] you so that was quite a journey I was told to keep it under an hour and I'm on
N 59 minutes okay so I'm gonna get some quick feedback from you I did say that we would we would look at our five goals so I'm going to look for a bit of audience participation now like either a thumbs up a thumbs down or I'm not quite
so sure about that Mr Keeny So based on the presentations we have seen tonight have you seen uh evidence that we are enhancing our elementary school program fantastic good are we did you see any evidence that we're enhancing
our secondary program good I like your answer so far what about social emotional learning have we introduced some of that into the curriculum okay good did you get the sense that we were generating a modern learning environment for our students
two thumbs up Mrs Z thank you and did you feel as if the instruction was Innovative collaborative and it was a modernized instructional framework okay good so moving forward um there's some evidence about we've achieved our vision 2025 goals as um as
determined by our strategic planning five years ago I just had to take this opportunity because I've got four seconds left to thank the department heads or the teachers or the tech Specialists all our wonderful students the teachers who came in tonight to prepare uh and to practice this because
this doesn't happen uh doesn't happen on its own it happens with the effort and the help and the experience and the professionalism of a lot of different people so thank you very much indeed [Applause]
you thank you very much Mr Keeny and for all of our student um presenters it was just a phenomenal phenomenal presentation so thank you very much I'd like to welcome the board now if they have any questions for Mr Keeny on the
presentation no we're good no just thank you thank you Mr Keeny and to everyone who presented it's it is the most amazing board meeting of the year so thank you okay at this at this time uh I would
like to move on to the public hearing by Mr uger Loro uh for declaring a public hearing on the student safety data system for incidents that occurred during reporting period one September 1st 2024 through December 31st
20124 thank you so much uh as just said this is a summary of incident programs and trainings that were entered into the student safety data system that occurred during reporting period one which is September 1 through December 31st we're asked to do this twice a year um and I'm
going to review them now the first begins with the summary of our incidents across the schools um we had three affirmed incidents of Hib zero incidents of weapon possession two incidents of violence which specifically were fighting one incident of vandalism which
uh was damage to property and three incidents of substance of a substance abuse offense each one being substance use confirmed um with regards to harassment intimidation and bullying statistics there were a total of 12 there have been
a total of 12 Hib investigations districtwide three at the high school one of which was affirmed three at the middle school zero of which were affirmed two at saltbrook zero of which were affirmed and four at Roberts two of
which which were affirmed with regard to the status of the Hib investigations all investigations were completed within 10 days as required by law the nature of the allegations in these Hib investigations were based on our protected categories and included race
Endor color and gender or gender identity gender expression mental physical or sensory disability our investigators were our school anti-bullying specialist at the high school that was Mr chrisell at the middle school that's Miss Wittenberg at
saltbrook that's Miss qu Kowski and at Roberts that's Miss Allen in response to these uh investigations the nature of the discipline that was administered in some cases were were detentions in school suspensions and out of school
suspensions uh there were also supports and interventions put in place these included student and parent conferences individual counseling and conflict resolution sessions between students um in addition to that we also have to enter programs and trainings that were
put in place throughout the school district to create a positive School environment and reduce incidents of HIV we had 41 trainings that were conducted across the district since September 1st uh during reporting period one these included um training for our
anti-bullying specialist on uh Hib law and policy trading for our staff and our students on social media and cyber bullying training um and all of the training that's occurred throughout the district uh through this time on belonging and Community uh with the goal
of creating supportive inclusive environments for all students and staff in addition in addition to that we have 50 programs implemented across the district and in our schools during reporting period one and I'm not going to read through them but you could see they really varied uh in their nature
and content from the elementary schools all the way through the high schools thank you thank you Mr Ugo at this time I declare the public hearing on the student safety data system for reporting period 1 September 1 2024 through
December 31st 2024 closed at this time there is an opportunity for the public to be heard on specific agenda items a spe specific agenda items only seeing none I declare the public portion of the meeting closed I need
approval of minutes as follows business and rework meeting for January 2nd 2025 y second was Mana do a roll call or go through all of them just go to the next one to uh business meeting um and the close
session for January 23rd 20125 roll call Miss castalano M Garo hi Dr Hayden hi M gunderman hi M Morana hi Mr Walsh m z hi Mr Walsh Finance items I would like to
move items one through six is listed on the agenda Amanda uh the only item of note I guess Bernard is item six which is interesting because we got money back um from a change order on um
unusual yeah so I thought I pointed out uh on the fixing the walkway right out uh in front of the school roll call m castalano m g hi Dr Hayden hi Miss gunderman hi M Morano hi
Mr Walsh Miss Zayn hi Mr Walsh facilities would like to move item one is listed on the agenda Amanda roll call M calano M Karo hi Dron Hayden
hi M gunderman hi M Morano hi Mr Walsh Zay Dr Epson Hayden education microphone there it is home um Hib items as mentioned by Mr U before and then the biggest one is the
approval of the 2526 and the 2627 calendars that we talked about at last meeting that is it thank you roll call M calano M Garo hi Dr Hayden hi M gunderman hi Miss
Morana hi M Walsh M Zayn Mrs gunderman personnel uh I'd like to move to approve items one through five as listed second Kristen primarily you know appointments uh and so forth I don't knower if you
have anyone to point out miss calana m g hi Dr abson Hayden hi M gunderman hi M Morano hi Mr Walsh hi m Mr Walsh board policy I would like to move items one and or yeah one and two
as listed on the agenda need a second second anyone secondy uh just one comment um the first one the first one on there is uh mandated for first reading and it's updates to spectator code of conduct
many of which I would have thought would have been in place already um but are uh and the consequences of those actions roll call M calana Miss K hi Dr Hayden hi Mrs gunderman hi M Morano hi
Mr Walsh M Zayn hi uh committee reports curriculum instruction and Technology Finance we met last week um we met with Jim and Lauren last week and they did a fantastic F job on the on the first
draft of the budget um and it'll be within cap the full board will get it in uh I think on March 11th and then that'll be sent to the county after the March 13th meeting um for County approval and then we'll have the uh
presentation in April great thank you Personnel um we just met recently to discuss some recent Personnel openings and postings thank you old business no one new business yeah just
just take a couple minutes um in your packets you did receive the code of ethics um it was a PowerPoint along with an acknowledgement um the power point listed all the different standards under the code of ethics as well as a couple items with regards to um conflict and
recusals uh social media voting so I asked once you review the the PowerPoint which I assume you did there's an acknowledgement that you need to sign um and give to me and then I will send those down to the county I thank the four board members that gave it to me already um and then I'll get the rest at
the end of the meeting so that's it thank you um also under new business uh the administrators Association will be going through contract negotiations this year uh Mr Walsh has volunteered to chair and I'm looking for two additional volunteers um to sit on that
committee Donna and Amanda thank you who was it I'm sorry Donna and Amanda Donna Amanda okay great okay now is an opportunity for the public to be heard on any subject matter please list your name and your
address when you come up to the podium and push push the green button more time there we go thank you okay hello my name is Meredith rusu and I live at 422 Union Avenue uh I just want to say thank you for listening to our
comments our feedback I appreciate this opportunity to speak to all of you tonight I wanted to come tonight to speak on behalf of the amilies with siblings who will be split across elementary schools due to the red districting a lot of you here actually
know me uh I have a son in fourth grade at awr named Matthew and a second grade son named Luke uh also at awr I served on the PTA board as VP of events for two years and I chair several committees so I'm very familiar with the school with a
lot of the students and all of the events that happened during the course of the year I think the board should reconsider instituting a one-size fits-all no exceptions policy that unduly impacts the handful of families who have older
children at awr and un incoming kindergarteners in the next two years who will be Zone to saltbrook our family is not directly impacted but I can attest to the importance socially and emotionally that having an older sibling at the same
school has had for our sons when Luke was entering first grade he was so proud to have his brother there with him in third grade in the same building he had been looking forward for years to being in the big school building where Matthew was going and
knowing that his brother was there and that he was following in his footsteps maybe even having some of the same teachers and same experiences as his older brother was a massive source of confidence for him my understanding is that only a
handful as in single digits number of families are being impacted by The Sibling split because of the redistricting I happen to know four of those families because they have sons who are friends with Luke and those Sons
younger siblings are the same age split as Matthew and Luke were it breaks my heart to hear those younger siblings asking if they will be in the same big school as their brothers and sisters to hear Luke's friends wondering if they're going to need to switch
schools will they be able to go to the same Halloween parades will Mommy and Daddy have to choose which parade to go to because parents can't be in two elementary schools at the same time for the same event and I get that all of these things
seem like small blips right they seem tiny but who they're not blips to are six and seven year olds Beyond just the logistical nightmare of splitting up siblings between two Elementary School and what that means for parents some of who will now have three drop offs if they have an
older kid at the middle school as well oops this decision to make no exceptions for the handful of families that are impacted will have real social emotional consequences for the
kids I'm not rec I'm not contradicting the need for redistricting but it's unclear to me why a concrete number of families with this specific sibling split has not been formally assessed the number of families with siblings who would be split for
2025 and 2026 is a fixed number that should be available it's not dependent on incoming families that existing number of the families with siblings here in town was set the moment the redistricting decision was announced anecdotally I've
heard of one family impacted by this this year here and also anecdotally I've heard of only four or five families that will be facing this burden for the next two years that number shouldn't move the
needle when it comes to redistricting it is reasonable to try and accommodate them for the kids sakes and to not make reasonable accommodations is negligent at best or unnecessarily indifferent to the kids in
their families wellbeing at worst New Providence School District has made such a push for social emotional Wellness I can't fathom why these couple of kids would be forced to burden this undue hardship again it may seem small to you
but I know what a difference it made for my sons to be together I have seen the impact of having a sibling there with you and what it means to the kids at the events that I'm at the school hosting and I personally know what a difference
it makes when someone another parent or faculty speaks up for your child over something that seems small it can make a world of difference and I would hope that the board would want to make that world of difference to the very few families facing the
situation thank you thank you for your comments anyone else uh hello my name is Christine Maloy I live at 30 Wilbur Street I am in zone B so my street will be reasoned in 2026 thankfully my youngest daughter
will turn five in August of this year so she will be able to attend awr with my older daughter who is in second grade there however if she was born a few months later that would not be the case and I would be devastated that is why I chose to speak tonight because why while
my children will be able to go to awr together I still care about and have empathy for my fellow community members who might not be as fortunate I remember back in 2013 when we bought our home my husband was thrilled that I was zoned
for awr because he attended awr himself along with his brother his parents also both grew up in New Providence I remember thinking it was funny that he would have such a strong connection with his elementary school but now I understand it awr is a special place
New Providence is a special town it's a small town where we care about each other and our community I am an active volunteer at awr I serve on the PTA board I've spent many hours revamping the Courtyard at awr and volunteering my time both in the classroom as a room
parent and in the library I love being in the school and I love being part of the awr community I am disappointed by the decision to split siblings as part of the redistricting plan while I understand that our town is changing and therefore requires a redistricting plan
I urge board members to put themselves in the shoes of the parents faced with this impossible position of having children at two different elementary schools in town I asked the board to consider evaluating this situation on a yearly basis over the next several years to determine how many families this
actually impacts there is a way to gather this information I know you have already started by sending out a survey and I thank you for doing that I think it is a great step and it's appreciated however I would have done the survey differently by only including families
in zones A and D so you could have a clear picture for just next year for instance imagine the survey indicates that five children should be rezoned to saltbrook next year if saltbrook kindergarten classes are larger than awr next year which you would know from registration and information that
already is in power school why not just let them St at awr the current methodology makes it feel like we are negatively impacting real existing families in an effort to accommodate hypothetical Future Families assumed in the demographic study done by Mr grip Dr
grip the board has offered to make sure that Elementary schedules don't conflict but this won't be possible for all events the first thing that comes to mind is Halloween watching my daughter March in the Halloween parade at awr and participating in her classroom party brings me immense Joy if a parent also
has a child attending saltbrook there is bound to be a conflict so that parent will have to choose which child's Halloween parade to miss that year while this may sound like a small thing it's actually what life is all about as a parent it's also important for our children that we are there to support
them splitting splitting siblings is not logical but beyond that I worry about the emotional well-being of our parents and children put in this situation children thrive on routine and consistency I don't see how routine and consistency can exist in this situation
for example drop off at awr is something that we are working to improve however even with improved efficiency it is not possible to drop off at awr and saltbrook by 8:30 without one child being tardy one idea would be for one child to get dropped off early before
the doors open but this would mean no adult supervision until the school opens at 8:15 if this were me I would not be comfortable with this and it wouldn't be possible to drop off at awr at 8:15 and make it to Salt broken time before the morning bell rings at 8:30 tardiness would cause great anxiety for children
affected and would even be a possible disruption to the classroom after school pickup is a whole other nightmare when dealing with two different elementary schools using myself as an example I arrive at awr by 2:30 to get a parking spot for a 3 pm dismissal by the time I'm able to exit the North Court lot
it's close to 3:10 even 3:15 on bad weather Days by the time I would be able to reach saltbrook it would be closer to 3:30 again a child in this situation would be waiting without supervision aside from this being unsafe I worry about the anxiety and stress this would create for for both the parent and the
child New Providence is a great town because we care about each other please reconsider your decision to split siblings thank [Applause] you thank you anyone else hi my name is Melanie Catz and I
live at 101 Woodland Road in New Providence I don't have a speech I actually didn't I'm not a good speaker I prepare to talk see I'm get emotional I have two kids in awr with
one younger SI my fourth grader is very shy has not anymore but has been very shy it took him a long time to get used to you know being around kids and actually having a
good Core group of friends and for him to have to leave that just because he has a younger brother I think would be awful also I know that there was some Talk of the like different events being held
at different days now for working parents to have to leave early two days instead of one so they can attend both their children's events such as a Halloween parade if it was a different day like I I don't understand that would
make it harder um I also I mean we we are not you know one of the Richer families in town that means you're taking off work and that affects your finances you know
for the days that you need off and also the school's events some of them do cost money so now you have double the events that you have to pay for I just really hope that you can
reconsider splitting up the siblings for the existing families I can't you know afford to move across town to have you know be zoned in the awr side so my kids can stay there so I mean I will keep coming to
the meetings next time I I will be more prepared but I just hope hope that you guys can consider thank you anyone else hi everyone Alison caravano 20 Edward Court um first I wanted to thank
Amanda Morano and Chris Memon Hayden for taking the time to speak with me and responding to the email that I sent to every board member um after last board meeting um to reiterate what I said in that
email I asked that the board reconsider the current redistricting plan and to adopt a more flexible and family- centered approach particularly for the families in zones A and D who are currently most directly impacted I asked that the board evaluate the kindergarten
class sizes at awr on a year-to-year case-by casee basis to try to allow families with older children already enrolled at awr to keep their s siblings together should space permit much like families in zones B and C who will be
given as stated at the last meeting consideration to start their children at saltbrook if they are starting within before zones C and B are going there this would be a reasonable and thoughtful compromise that takes into account the best interests of both
current and future students I'm very grateful that the survey was sent out I appreciated that and and did my part to ensure that every person in my neighborhood received it and texted it to all of them anyway in case they you know forgot perhaps to fill it out um I don't know this is not a time for
questions but I would appreciate um a followup as to when we are going to be expected to hear about the feedback on that moving forward um and I say that as a parent who has to figure out whether or not I will be needing to provide before and after care for my children
because a 15minute buffer time between schools is not enough time um and I am a parent in a two workking parent household and cannot be in two places at once um and our current daycare situation is trying to figure out if
they will have enough space to accommodate kindergarten drop off um so I would like that information as soon as possible um and I currently am on their wait list but they don't know where my daughter will be dropped off next year so I would appreciate that information
and any followup in the near future thank you hello I'm uh Ben Wolf I'm at 476 South Street I'm a parents of a Robert second grader and an incoming uh kindergartener and again appreciate
everyone's consideration looking at the redistricting plan and considering the families impacted by this uh we had reached out to um Dr melli when the regist plan was uh first implemented because we would have been happy to put
our older son into saltbrook to keep our kids together we were told we weren't impacted and now we're told that we are um so my wife Sam is very active in awr has been making plans for getting involved with uh kindergarten leadership and very close to the parents at Roberts
um I think everything said before just want to Echo those sentiments and uh understand that the board is going to be rediscussed this my understanding from prior meetings as well is that the decision here for what to do in the families with siblings is truly up to the board's discretion so I would just hope that the boards uses their
discretion to do what's best for the community and uh demonstrate what new problems is all about thank you thank you hello um my name is Akshay mea I live on 161 Street um I also want to talk about
this uh uh you know the the zoning re rezoning uh uh pro project um sorry I'm I'm not prepared today i' this is my first Board of Education meeting um so I apologize if I speak anything incorrect
uh or you know offensive um so uh I I do want to support the you know the folks that just spoke about you know the the concerns that they have uh my older son is uh going to turn six this year um he was born in November so he would have
also been impacted if he would have been enrolled last year into awr because my understanding is we would have had to shift him or maybe his younger sibling who is just one and a half year old right now he may have been impacted if he goes to another school so I do
empathize with the parents who have who are facing this issue of split up of their you know children um and uh it is also unclear to me uh if my son is going to go to awr or uh saltbrook this year he falls we fall under Zone B um and
then if whatever school he goes to uh we are living in a fear and doubt like what will happen to the younger sibling of of him um we also don't want to go through the split up process um uh it's you know the I don't want to again repeat all the
concerns they shared but I do support all the concerns about uh you know like splitting of time between schools the drop off concerns everybody has um and I I also don't want to go go through those uh uh stuff um so hope you all consider
uh this uh you know resoning on a Case by case basis especially for the families who fall under these four zones uh and hopefully we come to a to to a solution uh that also supports you know uh like how you can support kids into
different schools and yet you know maintain a a good environment for them to to to grow and and develop um that's all I have thank you good [Applause] night hello um my name is Eliza toot and
I live on 23 Brad street I'm not I did not look what zone are but we are going to be redistricted for the 2026 from awr to saltbrook um on my street there are four families um I have one daughter who will be entering kindergarten this year
into awr and then three years from now I will have a second daughter who is slated to be redistricted into saltbrook my neighbor right next to us is also in a similar situation with a daughter entering in this year and um a younger daughter as well who will be separated
um I have two other neighbors Who currently have children in a across the street from me and right next door actually all my surrounding neighbors have young children um they have uh two CH both two other neighbors have children currently in awr and younger
siblings who will also be districted for saltbrook um I just also wanted to express my support for um the reconsideration of the redistricting and the different cases and separating families um I think everything has been said um I also had
wanted to acknowledge that there I understand with the growth that redistricting is necessary I wanted to put forth that I have um friends who live in other districts um Denville is an example that is go currently going through redistricting um I have a friend who lives in what they call a flexible
Zone where their children can go to either elementary school but once the oldest child is in one school it's confirmed that the younger children will be um given a placement in that school to keep the children together so I'm just proposing this as um sort of seeing
what other school districts are doing to handle the growth that's happening um so thank you for your time thank you anyone else okay seeing none I need a motion to
recess to close session 4 student matters related to Hib student matters and Personnel thank you