Roll call. >> Miss Castellano here. >> Miss Gara >> here. >> Dr. Epson Hayden >> here. >> Miss Gundan >> here. Mr. >> Morano absent. Mr. Walsh >> here. >> Mrs. Zay >> here. >> You have a quorum. >> Please join me in the flag salute.
>> I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. This is a public meeting of the board of education of the Bureau of New
Providence. Adequate notice of this meeting has been given in accordance with PL1975, 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 close 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. I have no
comments. Dr. Zerley. Thank you, Miss Cicaro. Uh, at this time, I'd like to turn it over to Mr. Ugliao so he could just report out for everyone what our current enrollment numbers are for kindergarten as well as
then how we ended the school year. Our current kindergarten registration numbers for September, >> sorry, good evening. Our current kindergarten registration numbers for September of 2025 are 93 students for Salt Brook
Elementary School and 59 students for Alan W. Roberts Elementary School. That includes students um who uh were zoned for Saltbrook but were granted the exception uh and will be go reporting to
uh Roberts for kindergarten. Current first grade registration numbers for September 2025 at Saltbrook are 83 students and Robert's 77 students. Just with regard to our numbers and
enrollment for ending the year at Roberts, we had 608 students. Saltbrook 560 students at New Providence Middle School 391 students and New Providence High School 647 students for a total of
220 students. There were 35 students and out of district placements for a grand total of 2241 students. >> Thank you, Mr. U. Um I'd just like to bring to the board's attention that the past two days we have uh been engaging
the administrative team central office building administration and our administrative retreat. This is the second year uh that we've had an administrative retreat under my leadership and I do try to take the team off campus and so I would like to thank Kane University for giving us a
beautiful space uh to use over the two days. Some of the things that we did were past reflections, future thinking, and then reflections and theming moving forward. For the board's knowledge, I think the most important part of what we did on the first day was we broke down
the strategic plan and we broke down the goals. We then presented that to one another. And then from there, we broke down the board goals and we started action planning. Um, each of our administrators are going to have a goal that is associated with one of our board
goals. So, I'm very excited to see how it all starts to come together. Uh, today we worked on Frontline, which as you know, we will be moving um this coming year using their evaluation uh system and platform, which will be new for us for all of our observations. And
then we did do some time on linkit as well. I'd just like to thank Mr. Keany and Mr. U who have really helped me throughout the past two days present, make it fun, make it engaging. and tomorrow will be our Friday funday. So, um we're going to be doing some
educational relay races and the like and we'll end our day uh tomorrow. Uh that is all I have. Thank you, Dr. Zerley. Uh at this time, I would like to um present Mr. Keaney for the assessment report.
>> Good evening everyone. It's nice to be standing before you again tonight. I will be providing for you three rather short progress reports. Progress on our assessment data so far that we have received, progress on our belonging and community initiative and some progress
on the professional development that we incorporated this year. So, M doctors just talked about me make helping her make the um the retreat fun and engaging. I don't know if I'll be making this fun. I'll try and make it engaging.
So, we've titled this assessment report number one because as you know, we do do an assessment report in October as well, but I thought it would be appropriate for us to just go over the material that we have available at this moment. So, with regards to the NJ GPA, you will recall that the state of New Jersey
requires every uh student who's going to graduate high school to pass the New Jersey graduate uh graduation proficiency assessment. Okay, there's two components to that. There's an ELA assessment which assesses students on their 10th grade ELA standards and then
there's a math component which assesses students uh and is aligned to algebra one geometry standards. So every student usually in the junior year takes that with a view to passing it so they can graduate high school. Okay. I'm delighted to report this year that our
numbers are high with regards to ELA and math. Both of the ELA and math are above 90%. There is a the state of New Jersey has a data privacy policy. So if you do score above 90% you just report it as above 90%. In the packet I shared with the
board it gives more specific numbers which I don't release to the community but there for your information. Okay. And you can see our numbers are quite high which is nice to see. Um we have done some work with the NJGPA and it's encouraging to see that we have seen
some increase in these numbers. So if a student is not graduation uh ready, it's important that we know what they are able to do. First of all, we provide tutoring for any student who is not does not pass the NJ GPA during the
uh during the spring of the previous year. So that's put into the operating budget by Mr. Henry and we are able to provide tutoring for those students. They also are able to take and sit for the PSAT. We do pay for every student in the in the district to to take the PSAT.
So they have the option to take that. Uh they can sit for the NJGPA or retake in October. Uh and then they can also look at their SAT, ACT, uh or something called an ACUPPLACER which is is a um an assessment to do with those people
looking to enter into the armed forces and they can look at those scores and the state does provide cutoff scores for those. So even though they don't pass the NJ GPA, they can if they have appropriate cutoff scores, they can pass with regards to that. If they do not pass any of those assessments, then they
go into the third pathway which is a portfolio process which they do with our department heads. Last year we had uh below 10 students doing that and then all students did pass that assessment in their work with the department heads now. So we're in a good position. The
last two years we have had everyone who's part has passed the NJ GPA. Okay, which is encouraging to see. If we looked at a little bit historical data from the last couple of years, again we can only show those students who scored we can only show above 90 as as the
passing and below 10, but you can see over the course of the last uh few years we've stayed fairly consistent, but we did go up a little bit this year in ELA. And more importantly, we went up in math. And traditionally, math is one of the subjects where students do have uh
some issues with and we went uh higher than we did last year, which is good to see. So, we we've seen some progress. I'm especially uh pleased with the progress in the math because that is something that we've really focused on over the course of the last couple of years. It's also good to compare ourselves to our local districts as we
do for most of the data. Again, the ELA doesn't really tell us much because most of these schools here did score above 90%. In the board of education packet, you will see the actual score for our school. Okay? Uh but which was above
90%. But then when you look at the math, uh we were above 90%, so was Chattam, so was Melbourne, but you can see there's some other schools there who've not yet reached that proficiency. So again, that's encouraging. and good to see that comparatively to other schools that we
are performing uh well in that regard. Okay, that's our NJ GPA. When we look at our when we look at our ACT scores, we've got our ACT ski scores there for the last five years. You can see for the last four years, we've maintained fairly
consistent scores, variation between 25.2 and 25.8 over the course of those four years. This year myself and Mr. Henry have been in in some ongoing discussions uh with product tutoring. We do a lot of tutoring for the ACT with
regards to some strategies that we can come up with to try and help our students. And we're in the process of forming a a partnership with them that's going to help uh with the ACT and help bless you and help provide some skills and some strategies for students to help them with the ACT. But this is a little
bit of an area that we're going to focus on. Myself and Mr. and Henry have been involved in a number of conversations with regards to this and something we're going to focus on moving forward over the course of the next couple of years. When we look at our AP scores, we got our AP scores at the start of the summer. Um, this is the percentage of
total AP students with scores of three or more, three plus. And you can see we were we were higher last year, but this year we made a 5% increase in the number of students and the percentage of students with a score of 3 plus. So 95%
of our students who took AP scores got at least one three. Okay, most of them or a lot of them above that you know which is really encouraging to see. When we look at the number of exams taken versus the total number of exams which
had one passing score again you can see uh an increase over the course of the last uh five years especially from last year to this year. So we actually 94% of all the exams taken were passed this year which again is is really quite a high number especially because we were
really quite pleased about the 88 last year and I was standing before you last year saying well that's a really nice increase but that number has gone up again. So this is to the credit of the high school administration and the AP teachers and the department heads because they've done a lot of work with the AP teachers. As you may recall we
had quite a turnover of AP teachers in the course of the last four or five years. We've got some AP teachers now who are settling in to the course who've now got a bit more experience have done some more professional development and the the results of that are coming to fruition.
Uh the average AP score on exams going to give you chance just to look at that. Now that's that's pretty good. Okay. The average score for honor AP exams was four increased from last year and the year before. In fact, that's the highest
in the last five years. Okay. It's actually higher than the COVID year as well, which is not included in here, which is when students had an opportunity to take the exams at home. I'll let that settle for a moment. Okay. When it was higher than that. Okay. So, um we're really very really really very
very pleased and again kudos to everyone who's been involved in that. Last year we reported that the total number of AP scholars had gone up and you can see those these figures down here in the 50 66 and 57 shooting up to
101 there and we've further increased that number this year which has been particularly pleasing and I'd like to focus on this for you for a moment. These are AP scholars. These are classifications that are given by the college board for students who are performing at a high level on the AP
exams. And this is a particularly interesting graph, I believe, or chart. AP scholars are scholars who score three or higher on three or more AP exams. Last year, we had a really large jump
there. This year, we've gone down a bit, but don't worry, I'll explain what's happened. If you look at AP Scholars with honors, those have an average of 3.25 25 on all the AP exams taken and scores of three plus or higher on four
or more exams. Our numbers stayed fairly consistent. Still really good numbers. But then if you come over to our AP scholars with distinction last year, I remember reporting to you how pleased I was about the work we've done to jump from 23 to 41.
This year I'm pleased to report that we've jumped from 41 to 60. So that's 60 of our students who are now AP scholars with distinction. That is, as the writing there suggests, an average score of at least 3.5 on all
their AP exams they've taken and scores of three or higher on five or more of their exams. That's pretty impressive. Okay. And what what I like about this graph is we've taken some of these students and some of these students who are not the same
students although there could be some overlap. Okay. And we're shifting them into this direction. Okay. So that's really nice to see. So with regards to the AP scores again kudos to the department heads who have been meeting with the AP teachers and going over
strategies with them. Kudos to the high school administration who spent a lot of time meeting with these teachers and kudos to the teachers themselves who have undergone a lot of professional development discussing best strategies with each other and looking to move
forward. Okay. So, I'm pleased to report those. I also think it's important just to to make sure the board understands the summer programs we've just had. uh combination of federal funds and uh operating budget. We've been able to put together some excuse me summer programs
for our high school, middle school, and Roberts students. At the high school, we did it for rising 9th and 11th graders identified by need. At the middle school, we provide able to provide ELA math and a new executive functioning program for some students. We did a lot
of identification of students who were best uh best suit best have the needs for those programs. And at Roberts, we did the same thing with ELA, math and executive functioning. Small group of students, really focused instruction, okay, and a lot of success and really
good feedback from those programs. Okay, so that's the achievement report for three sets of data. I'll have probably another 10 sets of data for you in October and a little report on our summer programs. Before I move on, any questions on that?
Amanda? [Music] 110. >> So I'm looking combined. So >> nope, you're sorry. 110. Look at that. I could do math. Yeah. Uh how how is that calculated? Because I know you can take
some junior you take some AP's junior year or you can take and then some senior year. Is it com is it together? It's all AP students. We have some students taking AP in ninth grade now with the AP world history. So, it's a combination of all those different grade levels. >> Okay.
>> Okay. >> Yeah. Um, with the the total number of AP scholar on the total number of AP scholars and AP exams taken has I mean seemingly doubled since 2021 and 2022. Is it just reflective that we're
offering more AP classes or more students enrolling in them or are more choosing now to take the AP exams? >> That's a good question. um we have intentionally focused on the AP and students taking the AP. So we looked we went back and we looked at the entry
criteria and we see if we needed to adjust that for some courses. We looked at various strategies to encourage students to enter. And then when we were encouraging students to enter, we talked about the a with the AP teachers about how to how to encourage them to do well
during the course, how to increase the scores. And that started to become a bit of a self-perpetuating cycle as once a success takes place, it breeds more success. we have we the teachers are now promoting uh the AP courses with regards
to if they're talking to honors students you'd be a very good honor student you've been a very good honor student now it's time for you to do AP and just really promoting that through that process so a number of different criteria and different strategies we've used over the years okay I can't promise
another 20 increase for next year want to go on record of saying that Okay. So that's the first one down. Okay. All right. So let's talk a little bit about
our belonging community journey. I think it's important for us to report on this. This is such a big initiative for us during the course of the last school year. So I just want to remind the the board about our pathways that we had. This was our our road map for this
school year. As you can see, we had some district objectives. One of those was to provide professional development for our teachers. The other one was to uh to create guiding principles for our staff and for our community uh and to get a real grip on what the guiding principles
of our community are all about. Then we had individual goals at each school. We talked about appropriate uh resources for our students to create a sense of inclusive classrooms. We talked about equity with regards to behavioral management. And then at the elementary
schools, we talked about how to develop inclusive classrooms a little bit more. So that was our pathway, our roadmap for this year. I'd like to report that we have made progress on all of these. As you will be aware, we did have we have
whole, excuse me, I'm only halfway through the f second one. We have held PD during the course of the whole school year. We started in August with a whole variety of mini workshops. I reported out to you about that back in September and October and we did have our additional PD days during the school
year which really helped to develop a collaborative environment for our teachers with regards to focusing on belonging and community and the strategies they need to use moving forward with regards to that. So that's been a big success as I report to you a little bit later on. In addition, we
have our mission and philosophy and our new Providence core values that Mr. Ugloloro reported out to you back in June, I believe, or May. Um, and that was great work by Mr. Ugloro, collecting together a number of
different um focus groups and coming up with those uh so that we know what we're rooted in, what our community really believes in, and we can use those to move forward. So, lots of success there and we've actually completed those goals there. The other goals for the the four
different schools with regards to the the smart goals that we created. Our timeline was for these to be implemented midway through next school year. So, for this school year to be looking at those goals, investigating them, putting together committees, meeting and looking
at strategies with regards to being able to fully develop and implement them midway through this next school year. at the high school. We've been we've been very active with regards to that. Mr. Henry led a group of uh teachers over to Morristown High School so they could have a look at the the climate and the
culture in that school and get some some feel about how they address belonging in community. Mr. Henry with regards to and help with the department heads put together a foundation ed foundation grant for more literature so that we can represent uh we can show representation
of the different uh students that we have in our classroom and the ed foundation was very gracious to approve that uh we continue to develop that digital library promoting cultural competence and awareness that's an ongoing process and we've reported about
the PTSA wall of pride I believe that's almost at completion now and be ready just about just just about for the start of the school year. Mr. Henry, that's the goal. Good. I'm really looking forward to seeing that. That's going to be an exciting new addition to the high school. And Mr. Henry is going to be visiting the K
through six schools to get that coordinated approach to what we're doing. So, lots of movement there. Same thing in the in the middle school. Lots of work done in the middle school last year with regards to um reviewing the code of conduct, looking at the code of conduct in different middle schools
throughout the state, coming up with some standards of principles, creating visual displays and posting them at various places around the middle school. Uh and that was presented to the faculty on May 20th. So, they're in a really solid place with regards to be able to move forward now into this year. Um
they've updated the student handbook. Mr. Crystal has been working on that the last couple of days. uh and continue to streamline that process. But I think we're in a really solid position there moving forward uh for Mr. Cruetella to take over as the middle school principal. Good luck. Okay. So then as
we look at Alan W. Roberts and Saltbrook, they're trying to create more inclusive classrooms and one of the ways that we do that is to make sure that teachers fully understand all the everything about the students they have in their classroom. So, the two schools have been coordinating with regards to creating uh
assessment uh creating uh surveys that they're going to send out to the community before the start of the school year to get more information back from parents about the students that are going to be in their classroom. Okay? So, they have enhanced information to create more sense of community to get to
know their students better and move forward like that. still working on that final survey format, the coordination between the two schools and that will be ready to go as well. Okay. So, ready to go for the start of the next school year, although they may pilot it halfway through this school year. So, even
though we were coming we were, you know, the timeline was to come to completion halfway through this school year, a lot of these were really almost there. Okay. So, we're ahead of the game with regards to that. I think it's also important to report to the board that
the director of curriculum instruction also had a uh an objective to meet and we worked on developing a curriculum checklist for cultural competence for the resources and to make sure our curriculum was addressing certain components of our belonging and
community initiative. So working with the department heads, we put together a checklist so that moving forward all of our curricular now is addressing certain components and that's going to be an ongoing thing for the next five years as we go through our curriculum writing um
cycle. All the curriculum writers this year are using this checklist. Okay? And we're piloting that this year so we can really start to identify all the different component parts of the curriculum. I've given you a real summary there. You'll be pleased to know I'm not going to read every single one of those, okay? But this is the
checklist which I discussed with the curriculum instruction technology uh committee recently with regards to how can we make sure now that all the curriculara that we are either adapting or writing addresses certain things that we want to be in the curriculara with
regards to our belonging and community. So good success there, good movement there. With regards to the uh the information we want to get back from our students, we we uh did submit over the course of the year. First of all, back
in April of 2022 and then at the start of the school year in September and then we did it in uh January, February and then in June, we gave s uh students surveys with various questions. Okay, I'm not going to show you every single response to every single question, but I
just want to give you a sample of some of the responses that we got so you can see how we're using them. Here's a K through six question. I'm asked to share stories in school about my life. Nice jump from April 2023 to September
24, but now fairly constant. So, this is something that we are going to focus on moving forward. you know, what opportunities are our K through six teachers providing our students to to share stories about their life, to bring their life into the classroom, you know,
so that's an area that we can work on. Okay. Another area in 7 through 12, I'm taught how to see things from different perspectives, very constant through the year. Okay. Relatively pleased with that. A little bit of work to do, something we we can encourage the
teachers to look at. Um but but decent results all the same in K through6 I learn about people who are different from me. Nice increase here. Okay. Showing that that we the teachers of K through6 are exposing students to a
little bit more maybe than they previously were. Um asking them for for different ideas and different perspectives and making sure they can appreciate the variety uh of personalities and cultures that we have in our classroom. So that's something that we will be particularly pleased
about. This is very important to us and I share this for you for K through 6 and 7 through 12. I have an adult that I feel comfortable talking to at school. These numbers are staying fairly consistent. A little bit lower K through six because they don't have individual counselors. You know, 7 through 12 they
do. So it's easy for them to feel as if they do have someone to relate to. 78 nice number, but we've got to get that up a little bit. Okay. because we really want students to make sure they do have such a sense of belonging that they have someone they can talk to uh higher at the K through 12 level. Okay.
So just a sample of the survey results that we get and how we use those surveys results to to determine our way forward. So overall with wrong with regards to the belonging community lots of success, lots of opportunities now to dig deep into the data. Lots of opportunities to
tweak and modify our original plan based on the data we're getting back. Lots of movement forward, but lots of work still to be done. So, I look forward to reporting back to the board uh next year as we modify, tweak, and adjust and move forward with that. Okay. Any questions
about Yes. >> Um the survey samples? >> Yep. >> Um the yaxis is always on a base of 100. You just zoomed in a couple times for the K through six. >> Excellent question. It's always on about 100 just for the illustration. Yes.
Thank you. [Music] Okay, two down, one to go. And I'm thinking to myself, I wish I brought my bottle of water up to the front.
You don't have to do that, Stacy. But thank you anyway. Okay, I have reported out to you previously with regards to the different PD days. We did four PD days uh during the course of the year. The first three we really designed around the needs of our staff with
regards to exposure to some additional belonging and community um subjects, excuse me. And then we held our last PD in on June the 6th. We differentiated that a little bit between the K through six and the 7 through 12. We did bring in an outside
consultant to talk about emotional regulation in the classroom for the K through six. That was something we're listening to our staff with regards to what they need and that was something that was really emphasized with our staff. So we were lucky to get actually a grant from the alliance who helped us
out with that and the and Rachel Haynes came in and and talked to the those teachers regards to emotional regulation. And that was a lot of success. Uh K through uh sorry 7 through 12, we did a lot of the school climate and technology surveys and did a lot of department specific information with
regards to that. But what I want to share with you is those four PDs were very successful. But the feedback that we received for all four PD days as a whole, okay, the overall feedback, I summarized it for
you at the top there. The early dismissal PD days provided tremendous ongoing opportunities for self-reflection, deep dives into key belonging and community topics, and vital collaboration time throughout the year. Now, I know I've printed for you
these four slides, and it's really rather small. I did share with you electronically, you know, the online document, the flip book, you know, and it's much much bigger in the flip book. Okay, I'm not going to read every one of those to you, but the over overwhelming feedback was from the teachers was how
good it was to to have this time during the course of the year to reflect on what they were doing. The fact that they were evenly spaced over the course of the year, allowed us to build from one subject to the next, and allowed the teachers to collaborate over the course
of the whole year to get some really good work done. So, we got a tremendous amount of good feedback and positive feedback with regards to that. This year was our first is if this year was our first time we had three ISP days in school professional planning days. Um we talked about this before but I'm
delighted to announce that over 400 of these days were used. Some teachers used one, some teachers used more than one. Some teachers didn't get to use any focus and encourage teachers to do moving forward. But over 400 ISP days
were used and I was delighted about that. Um, and the principles did very well, very hard, worked very hard to to make sure that took place. And I just wanted to quote these two things. I'm going to read them to you. I found ISBP days to be extremely beneficial, great
use of my time. This one I like, although it's not great reflection on our PD, but ISP days are the most valuable PD I have had experience in all my years in the district. Being able to focus and produce a series of lessons while teasing it out with a college
colleague was the best use of my time. So teachers have really adapted to that over the course of the year and really started to to identify and isolate the best things they can do with these days so they can really help that can really help with their professional growth. And that's what it's all about. Our PD days,
our ISP days, our belonging and community initiative, professional growth. How can we promote professional growth within with our stu teachers? How can we help them be better teachers because ultimately that's going to help with student achievement down the line.
Okay. And I think it's been a great success. Thank you. Any questions on that? No. Okay. Thank you very much. [Applause] Mr. Keiny, now that I have my microphone
back, I just want to thank you for all the time and effort that you've put in, our administrators, and as well as our our our teaching uh staff. It it's been an incredible uh previous year. So, I thank you. Okay, moving on. We have an opportunity
for public comment on any specific agenda item if anyone would like to come to the mic. No. I need approval of minutes for the business meeting and the closed session on June 26, 2025. >> So moved with the Oh, seconded with a caveat.
>> Do I need to say >> Okay, you got it in there. It's already in. Yep. Thank you. >> Roll call. >> Miss Clasana. Hi >> Miss Gara. >> I >> Dr. Epson Hayden. >> Hi >> Miss Gunderman. >> Abstain >> M. Moreno.
>> I >> Mr. Walsh. >> Mrs. Aim. >> Hi. >> Action items. Uh, Mr. Walsh. Finance. >> I would like to move items 1 through 11 as listed on the agenda.
>> Daisy. That was Amanda. Sorry. Uh, facilities. Mr. Walsh. I got >> Oh, sorry. I'm jumping the gun. Sorry. >> Roll call. >> Miss Costalo. >> Hi. >> Miss Carolo. >> Hi. >> Dr. Epson Hayden. >> Hi. >> Misserman. >> Hi. >> Mrs. Morano. >> Hi. >> Mr. Walsh.
>> Hi. >> Mrs. Zayn. >> Yes. >> Facilities. Mr. Walsh. >> I would like to move to items one through four as listed on the agenda. I'll second Stacy. No comments, nothing. Uh, roll call. >> Miss Castellano. >> Hi.
>> Micara. >> Hi. >> Dr. Epson Hayden. Hi. >> Miss Gunderman. >> Hi. >> Mrs. Varo. >> Hi. >> Mr. Walsh. >> Hi. >> Mrs. Zay. >> Yes. Education. Dr. Eson. Hayden. >> I'd like to approve items 1 through 10 as listed below.
>> Seconded. Donna, >> um, you have in your packets that you got the textbook and education material adoption for science courses, um, a list of field trip destinations for the upcoming year. See, approving our
emergency virtual or remote instruction plan for next year and everybody got a copy of the new strategic goals and board goals, which I will turn over to Drs. Zerley. >> Thank you, Dr. Eson Hayden. Uh, so I'd just like to bring to everyone's attention that in your binders this
evening, you do have a new flip book. Uh, and this flip book is going to be our mission statement, portrait of the graduate. You'll see that our district's five-year goals, which are our strategic plans are outlined there, as well as then our board goals, which are directly aligned to the strategic goals. We then
put tabs for the five years out so that we'll just continue to add to this as we move through the strategic plan and we have it all in one place how the committee goals are directly aligning to the strategic planning goals. >> Thank you Dr. Zurley. Roll call.
>> Miss Kelan. >> Miss Ko. >> Hi Dr. Hayden. Hi >> Miss Gundererman. >> Hi >> Miss Morano. Hi >> Mr. Walsh. Hi >> Mrs. Zayn. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Gunderman personnel. >> Um, I'd like to move to approve items 1 through seven as listed.
>> Anna, >> believe Dr. Zerolley has a few shout outs she'd like. >> Yes. I'd like to welcome three new members here this evening. Uh, we have Miss Heather Hubert here. Huber here who has done multiple leave replacements for
us in the area of mathematics uh here in the middle school high school as well as most recently in Roberts. We're very excited that she will be joining us for a tenure track here at the high school. Uh we also have Miss Stephanie Miller
who will be joining us from most recently the Summit Public School System, but spent many years in the Clark public school system. She will be joining us as a uh science teacher at Salt Brook School. She's very passionate about science. We're very excited to
bring her in uh to Salt Brook School and become a tiger. And then lastly, we have Miss Melissa Morano. She'll be joining us as our new department head of science, K12 and middle school science teacher. She comes to us with a
tremendous amount of experience. Uh probably about over 20 years, definitely actually almost 25 years in the brick public school system. Most recently, she has been in Scotch Plains. She's held many uh leadership positions uh over the past 25 years of her career and we're
very excited to bring her in and she'll lead our new science department our science department as our new department head. Congratulations. >> Roll call. >> Miss Galana. >> Hi. >> Miss Kara. >> Hi. >> Dr. Epson Hayden. >> Hi. >> Miss Gunderman.
>> Hi. >> Miss Moreno. >> Hi. >> Mr. Walsh. Hi. >> Mrs. Zayn. >> Yes. So happy to have you. >> Long time no see. >> So happy to have you. [Music] textbook
my backpack. >> Okay. >> Okay. Mr. Walsh, board policy. I would like to move item one as listed on the agenda. >> Second, >> Kristen. >> There are four policies up for first
reading um focused on the types of school sponsored trips. Two policy and regulations um around eligibility standards for athletics and co-curricular activities. And then there is revisions to our attendance regulation um around what an excused
absence is. All first reading. >> Good. Uh, roll call. >> Miss Galana. >> Miss Gara. >> Hi. >> Dr. Hayden. >> Hi. >> Misserman. >> Hi. >> M. Morano. >> Hi. >> Mr. Walsh. >> Hi. >> Mr. Zayn.
>> Yes. Committee reports. Curriculum instruction and technology. >> As Mr. Keiny said before, we met as a committee to go over the process of curriculum reviewing and they will be coming out soon so that we can start
that review process as the year is about to start. >> I I would just like to take the opportunity to thank all of our teachers who are writing curriculum this summer. I know it's not easy um but we certainly appreciate it and even more I appreciate all the people who will be reading it this after they finish. So, thank you in
advance. Uh finance, facilities and safety. Joe, nothing. Personnel. >> Perfect. Okay. Uh, moving on to old business. Uh, Memorial Rock ad hoc committee reports. >> Yes. Um, so I'd uh like to thank both uh
uh Mrs. Castellano and Mrs. Morano along with Dr. Zerley. Uh the I think we call the ad hoc committee on student and staff memorials met on July 14th. Um, and we reviewed the request from our Saltbrook PTA um to honor our retiring principal, Mrs. Drexinger, um, with a
commemorative stone that will be placed uh, at the um, Saltbrook um, playground on the that's going to be constructed on the upper playground. I'm pleased to report that the committee unanimously approved the request um, in alignment with board policy 8870
um, recognizing Mrs. Drexinger's exceptional leadership and her instrumental role in funding the playground uh through PGA uh PTA collaboration uh grants and fundraising efforts. Um this dedication follows district precedents uh for recognizing
impactful contributions by district administration and reflects our shared appreciation for Mrs. Drexingers's lasting legacy at Salt Brook School. So thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Gunderman. New business,
uh, Dr. Zerley. >> Yes. I'd just like to report for the full board that I'll be meeting with the personnel committee on August 5th, I believe it is. I'll be reviewing my superintendent goals with the committee and then during close session in August. We'll review those again with the full
board and we'll approve those for the September meeting. I'd just like also to also go back to the attendance regulation and I'd just like Mr. you to share some additional information about that. I know that um we were able to discuss a lot of that individually with
board members, but I think it's important that we just touch upon the rather large change in the regulation and how we're going to communicate that out to families. >> Thank you, Dr. Zerolley. So the our attendance regulation establishes for our families what absences are
considered excused and unexcused at the school level and what the impact um of an accumulation of unexcused absences is for a student in grades K through 8 and then in 9 through 12. Um the the the
most important adjustment we've made to the regulation is that moving forward we will have as excused absences the six specific uh absences that are established as excused in state code by the state department of education. And
then as is our our purview as a as a school district, we are establishing that student illness when excused by a note from a physician or a doctor will also be considered excused. That is a change from the pol from the regulation
um in its current state which says that an ab student absence due to still student illness excused by a parent note will be considered excused. Okay. The rationale behind this is as
always we want to recognize that students see time in school as the most significant has the most significant impact um on their continuous growth. uh as students and we really want to do what we can to optimize that recognizing
that children um will get sick. Um but really trying to encourage and educate parents that if they do take their child to the doctor um that we want them to come back in with a doctor's note and those absences will be considered
excused. Recognizing that this is a big change in our practice at the school level, um we're going to begin a real communication campaign around this with our families. It's going to start with communication from my office regarding the change and what that means. Um and
that'll be followed up by adjustments and revisions to our parent and student handbooks for each of the schools. um then followed by communication from our principles about this change and what it means and frankly what it doesn't mean
for them as well. Um and we really um are are confident that with the right communication um parents will not only understand this change but we'll really be educating them um and partnering with them how we could really optimize their students uh
achievement and and well-being in our schools. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. U. Uh, now is an opportunity for the public to be heard on any topic at all. Anyone?
No. I need a motion to recess to close session for litigation. >> Okay. Just like to wish everybody a happy summer, what's left of it. Enjoy every day and make some memories. Uh, call for adjournment.