##VIDEO ID:p7Q76Xl9dbQ## so if it's right as okay for a bit she just gave us the thumbs up so I guess we start right good evening everyone I'd like to welcome everyone and we are here for the north runuk Township Board of Education meeting I'd like to call this meeting to order this is our com conference meeting here at North Brunswick middle school today is Wednesday January 15th could we all please rise for the Pledge of [Music] Allegiance I pledge allegiance 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 Mr Ali here Mr Carter here miss James Miss Chief here Mr Lori here Dr Patel here Mr Singh there miss to here and Mr when here we have aarum thank you the New Jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interests is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the open public meetings law the public notice of this meeting which included the time date and location was distributed by 3 p.m. Tuesday November 26 2024 and Wednesday November 27th 2024 in the following manner posted on on the bulletin board reserved for announcements in the board office 25 Lynwood place North Brunswick mailed to the home News Tribune Star lger nj.com and the clerk of the township of North Brunswick and delivered to the nine duly elected board members good evening everyone it's great to be out on the Road at one of our schools our brand new or newer I should say our newest School in North Brunswick North Brunswick Township Middle School um it's great to have an audience great to see some of our staff administrators students and families so thank you all for coming out and at this time I will turn it over to Mrs shoka before we get begin thank you Miss to um again as Miss to said this is our inaugural conference meeting um in the past we used to do conference me meetings pretty much most months during the the calendar school year and then when we added nbtm into the rotation we actually also added the ECC and we didn't have enough months in which we had time to do all these conference meetings so we actually made a shift and decided that the the winter spring was a great time to just do the conference meetings at half the schools and we would alternate years so last year we did all four elementary schools from uh January through June and this year we're doing the Early Childhood Center mbtm Lynwood and the high school so we'll get to get to see what's going on in each of the schools and this way're we're getting some there's some different things going on by the time we come every other year um we're excited to see what mbtm has to share with us this year and uh Mr Slover if you want to come on up do you want us to head down to our seats okay so we can go we can move the tape down there [Music] all right good evening everyone and welcome to nbtm uh anyone further Ro back there I'm Rick Slover principal North BR Township Middle School I want to thank you all for being here tonight and for your continued support every day every year and so on we couldn't do what we do without your support we greatly appreciate it we appreciate you beting here appreciate you all being here tonight thanks to our student musicians who are going to perform for us in just a minute thanks to the parents who are joining us and to the staff who have come here to help out um what we're going to start out with tonight a little bit of a treat for you all our national anthem will be performed by Ava delapaz a member of our nbtm chorus Ava would you please rise for the national anthem oh say can you see by the Dan early light what so proudly we held at the Twilights last gleamings who spr stripes and bright stars through the perous fights for the red parts we watched were so gallantly streaming and the rockets red glare the bombs bursting in air gave proof to the night that our flag was still there oh say that Star Spangled Banner yet W for the land of the free and the home of the pr thank you AA very nicely done that was better than the version on Monday Night Football the other night absolutely great job it is now my pleasure to introduce some members of the nbtm band under the direction of Mr Chris English who are going to play a selection from their recent Winter concert Mr English all right we're play a song called Alligator Alley that we prep for [Music] n [Music] n a [Music] you la [Music] [Applause] C last couple days so many like I can play I want to play I want to come through this North kids are the best are amazing thank you so thank you Mr English I have a feeling that the parental portion of our audience is about to dwindle I could be wrong I could be wrong anyway uh some introductions before we move on some people you're going to see and hear from in just a few minutes as we move on of course our supervisors Dr Rich for special services uh Kate DWI for English language arts and social studies and Dr for Math and Science okay our Deans Mr no Feliz and our interm Dean Miss Nicole Lori who's filling in for n Mar who is out on maternity and of course guess it's possible I have two right hands Mr Rano and Mr Fel and a very happy birthday to Mr F today right as as my mother my late mother would have said she's celebrating the anniversary of her 39th birthday but now we have a little video from our TV production club for you all to enjoy for just a couple minutes the things that are most important to me um for everyone at the school whether it's students or staff um that everyone feels safe and comfortable um and that they're and that we have a highly productive school um where um kids who are doing really really well can continue to do so and kids who might be struggling can improve and kids in the middle um maybe can aspire to to bigger things and and that they hopefully enjoy themselves in the process my favorite memory is yesterday's basketball game it was the first game that we went to that they won the home team won and um when they did everybody was screaming and it was fun honestly anything that involved with sports or like football wrestling lacrosse I would have to say my favorite memory was finding out that I got hired to work here because I am a North brunic alumni and even when I was a little kid at John Adams I always knew I wanted to be a teacher and I always knew I wanted to teach right here at North Brunswick so that is my favorite memory here the pep rally it's my favorite memory because I got to play the fun games with my friends uh well we're fortunate that as a middle school we offer a lot you know we have uh over 20 clubs that kids can get involved in um 15 athletic teams and events during the course of the year like you know well towards the end of the year of course for eighth grade we have semi-formal and we we take several trips during the year with our AVID program so there's a lot of opportunities uh for students to enjoy themselves while they're at school [Music] here one of the questions we're going to ask you is can you share a memorable experience from one of your clubs teams or activities mine mine was like the first of yoga Club um everybody like they were um everybody was having fun um we were playing a lot of music and everybody was getting like um you know ready to like have fun in yoga Club I like how you research both parts of the argument that we happen to be researching inside said Club Debate Club I would say like the first time that we went outside and did yoga cuz it was it was common I know it's not a long time ago but with nature Club we've been going outside and the other week we went out back to the lake over there and it didn't seem too cold out we were out looking for like squirrel nests in trees and we found 18 of them but there was also ice on the lake and the kids were picking it up and we were throwing it on the lake and it was so cool to hear the different sounds that you could make by throwing different things so it was it was fun it was a little chaotic and it was sort of a science lesson in a way the best part of my job um other than getting to know the kids is when I run into them years from now whether it's in shopright or at Nino's or uh at a ball game or or sometimes um even down the shore I might run into a former student and they tell me what they're doing with their life um I'm in touch with many former students and um you know whether they they they tell me that they just got into ruter or they got into Penn State or um that they graduated and you know the different careers that they get into that's the that's the best part of of what I [Music] do so some outstanding work by our video Club under the advisor ship of Mr Frank morone who was also an alumnist okay some updates and highlights okay since we last met you may have heard of Yonder pouches okay especially after the other day right um well as you know we are piloting that program here and it's gone very very well we have RVE reviews from the entire staff okay uh we do not see phones in classrooms okay and only once in a while do we see them in the hallway and the truth is it makes it very easy to catch somebody that way because they're sticking out like a sore thumb all right which so the system is working it's not perfect and you know the if you put Yonder pouch in Google the first thing you're going to see is 10 10 articles on how to get around them okay uh so it's not perfect but it is a mechanism and it is working right and like anything else I'm sure it's going to evolve over time and we'll evolve with it but so far so good it was it's been a great move and and like I said the staff are reporting great things so thank you very much for the support in that uh something new this day not our wday program which are our early Thursdays but Wednesday is another proposal that we created that Mrs troker approved where once a month we take a Wednesday and we extend our home room and we use it as like an extra support period okay for kids that get caught up in different areas or they can visit different teachers for extra help things along those lines okay now there's still a couple missing pieces to that that we're waiting to fill out so we haven't started that yet that's going to be a second half of the Year thing but one we did start right off the bat was our Flex PLC program which was new this year as you know our our teacher are all in plc's professional learning communities they meet every day okay we gave them the option to flex out one day a week where they could meet with different teachers for different purposes so instead of eighth grade social studies meeting with just eighth grade social studies teachers every day maybe they want to meet with a science teacher to talk about a kid or maybe they want to meet with a language arts teacher to discuss um grading a writing assignment or something along those lines all right or if they need to need they want to um that have a meeting with a parent let's say and they want to do it together right so it's time that they can use that way that is going very well so far too and it's been much appreciated by the staff we added a drama elective which we'll talk about in a second uh we added Saturday detention which was actually in year two but we did not meet with you last year so that is uh we haven't used it a ton honestly but it's been nice when we've needed it it's given us another option rather than removing kids from class okay and our PBIS program has undergone a major revision which Mr F will talk about in a little bit okay and then the oldies but goodies our academic program that we're very proud of of course as you know you just heard we have a thriving music program many clubs in athletics one thing we're very proud of is the high-end and highin electives we offer here things like stem Aces which is our essentially our coral fish tank program data science intro to theater TV production mechatronics Advanced Studio Art you will not find these in many middle schools okay but we do them for two reason num you know number one for certain kids it pushes them okay data science is not easy right and for other kids it might be an interest that keeps them coming to school right and that's something we need today our AVID program as you know in the numerous support programs we offer happy to announce our educator and support person of the year Mrs Megan Carol and Mrs Florine white uh both are outstanding at what they do and such a vital part of our team here we're happy to have them you'll hear more about them in the coming months I'm sure attendance and conduct last year we entered last year with a 21% uh chronic absenteeism rate our goal was to get it down to 16 we got it down to 13 okay we are at 14 right now and holding steady and speaking of Mr FY today it looks like we're in actually a very good position to drop that down further okay can't guarantee it but you know it looks like that could happen compared to a year ago on this date we have a 35% red uction in in in school consequences issued not that people aren't get not that we're not issuing consequences kids aren't getting written up as much okay um we have a 23% reduction in ISS and a 75% reduction in OSS all right so we're keeping kids in school too um why it's probably a combination of all these things our counseling our mentoring programs our restorative practices but I can't deny our turnover rate we're a two-year building every September 50% % of our building is new right so we do swap classes out pretty quickly uh couple pictures of our honor rooll and high honor rooll assemblies that we have after every marking period um one thing we did for this year's presentation just so you know is some of our day and the life things we've kind of mixed in to break it up a little bit and kind of keep it moving but we do hold those so we get to honor our highest achieving students I forgot to mention to at the beginning in addition to the music program um there are several pieces of student artwork posted outside the doors if you didn't see them on your way in please take a look on your way out okay academics we have almost 300 students on our honor Ro or high honor role we have 762 students so we're at 39% that is almost our pre-pandemic level we tended to hover around 42% before the pandemic uh not going to lie we all know njsla scores continue to be an issue right and 2022 was our first year testing post pandemic we are tested in six areas math in both grades language arts in both grades algebra and geometry in in four out of the six we went down that year okay last year we gained ground in three out of six or I'm sorry two years ago and then last year we gained ground in all six in some a nice gain in some we gained by a hair but we gained and we stopped the bleeding right which is one of the most important things okay now I did quite a bit of work over the last two summers tearing apart the data to see to to look for some different I didn't want to look for blame all right I just wanted to make sure we all had the full story okay because it's very easy to just look at a score and blame a kid or a teacher okay there's a lot more to this than that as you all know okay so over the last two summers as the DAT has come out I've really torn it apart and reassembled it again and again and again all right now if if we go back to when Mrs ke and I were teaching together we we gave gppa every year okay Trenton didn't like that so they had to make NJ ASK okay and after a few years of that they had enough of that fund so it was on to park all right and then that wasn't good anymore either so now we're on njsla who knows what it'll be next year now when my question was when did we lose ground and why okay and what factors were at play so as I said four out of six tested areas saw their greatest drops due to the Pand mmic in those years okay one of the six was during the park era so in between Park years we just had a drop in one test at one point okay and then one was a significant shift when we shifted from Park 2 njsla which tells me harder test okay now if we break these tests down we can look at all of this so for ela7 the pandemic gave us a 23o drop in one shot right in the three years since we have gained back nine points all right that kind of tells you how hard it is to gain the points back okay especially the students we have now were in second and third grade when the pandemic hit okay but we've had three straight years of growth it's we have we just had our highest score since the pandemic and our current seventh grade is coming in with scores almost identical to last year's seventh grade so that's good news Okay um in math 7th the park era that's the one that in the middle of Park we just dropped 13 points one year okay uh but we've had three state years of growth and we just had our best score in the SLA era not great but our best one ela8 the pandemic we lost 11 points went down again in 23 but grew last year and then math 8 this is our most persistent issue math8 has always been an issue and there's a couple reasons for that the test switch from Park to njsla we had a Sixpoint drop that was our biggest drop okay it dropped again in 23 but we did rebound a little bit last year part of the issue here is that if you compare math to ELA all Ela students take the same test math students are separated out there's a math test and an algebra test and a geometry test if we put algebra and geometry kids into the math test our scores would Skyrocket okay not our decision algebra now mind you these is our these are our highest functioning students algebra and geometry pandemic they lost 24 points our largest loss they've only gained back half right but we have two straight years of growth geometry we lost 14 we've gained back four right if it's that difficult for them think about the other kids right that's what I wanted to get at uh but one thing we are still happy with and is paying some dividends is the the Innovative schedule we came up with a few years ago okay where we have four classes at 53 minutes each for core classes and then three life skills every day at 40 minutes what this allows for is students who need intervention in both math and Ela can have both starting in September all the way through June prior to that we would pull kids out of our RNR which was like our extended Home Room starting in January and only until April and only for one subject we have kids who need help in both right now they can get that help but we also can now offer that plus another level of Intervention which is our pullout program which is going very well as to as well this also gives room for mandated courses without hampering other curricula a great example of that is three years ago when the state told us we had to teach Civics but they didn't take anything away so where do you put it okay a lot of schools crammed it into social studies for example if we were to do that that would impact the social studies curriculum at the high school and Lynwood because it would it would change the domino effect all right we were able with our schedule to build it in okay um it allows this is very important to me this allows students to pursue more than one music class in the era of seel social emotional learning hundreds of kids find their home in those rooms right and if they want to have chorus on one day and band on the other that's great I'm all for it allows for support and class or Support classes such as Avid or our our fundamental physics program which supports our physics classes provides room for the high interest courses that we talked about data science TV production and nine out of our 12 test scores I again six tests two years nine out of 12 have gone up since we've implemented this right so the early data is positive um Miss nlman is not here tonight you heard the band right but I will go through her highlights so we just had our winter concerts okay they also performed down at Lynwood as kind of a recruiting Mission um on the 20th last day of school before the break I know many of you either experienced or have heard of Christmas in the Commons right we kind of do something similar it's a little Tamer but far Tamer but we uh but we the Jazz Band comes in and plays Christmas songs during the lunch period it's always a good time all right and actually our um our chamber orchestra plays traditional Christmas music in the library during the day very very nice day um we have three students Connor Chan Ava who you just heard and natana uh Who were regionally or just recently selected to the um Region 2 Intermediate course after an arduous audition process and there you see some upcoming events and that's music couple shots from our Winter concert last month just about a month ago right that's about it for me at the moment now we're going to talk math actually I'm not going to talk math you don't want me talking math all right even though my budget was fine right okay this loga everybody thank you good evening just bear with me so I don't drop are you able to hear me clearly if I speak right here thank you so much good evening I wanted to focus on a couple of different areas for both mathematics and the Sciences tonight so I have a few slides and the first portion uh for myself for mathematics is going to be a look at the academics what are the students doing in the classroom and one of the biggest things that we are doing this year in the middle school is focusing on vertical math and what I can best describe to you about the vertical math is that the students are actually getting up out of their seats much more in the classroom and they're rotating around the room it's very collaborative that's it's a chance for the students to see multi-dimensional approaches because it allows them to work collaboratively and see how other groups are working on solving the problems so they're rotating around the rooms each leaving their mark on the wall on the papers on the whiteboards on the white notebooks so they can actually have a chance to be very reflective have more discussions and continue what they're doing from the beginnings of the introduction of the content and bring it all together as a class so it's a big uh bold look at a large group of how the Math's being done in the room rather than finding themselves sitting independently and and working sometimes in isolation at their seats without having the opportunity to just look at everything from a lot of different perspectives the second topic is that the students are just continuing on we've got lots of math competitions taking place we have the AMC 10 the amc8 is going to be next week here at the middle school and we also have the New Jersey Math League taking place professionally the vertical math was actually a result of the building thinking classrooms group study that the seventh and eth eth grade math teachers are doing here at the middle school we also have student engagement as part of the professional learning and our new math coach this year Miss Kim Mory who moved up from fifth grade is going to be doing a lot of the professional learning with student engagement in the classroom for the teachers both here at the middle school and also at the 56 building one thing I'm very excited to mention to you is that we have begun the process of vetting and selecting new curricular materials um we've developed a task force for grades five through Algebra 1 since we do have that course that shared here at the high school and we have a team of about eight staff members uh across both this building and the Lynwood School and another four additional teachers at the high school for Algebra 1 and we have been able to look at three very good curriculums and have gone through uh with a very deep dive into what what is that curriculum going to provide our students and that really is the main focus was it right for the needs that our students have and I'm happy to announce that the team unanimously selected Amplified Desmos math and so we are moving into a pilot phase uh this coming winter we're looking to begin right after the President's Day weekend um with all of the different grade levels uh piloting for about 20 Class Days uh before we have kind of a final review and hopefully proceed forward in putting that uh the curriculum up for recommendation uh the math and science data team uh through New Jersey tier systems of supports uh had met earlier this fall and one of the things that we did was we broke down and disaggregated a lot of the data from the njsla last year and one of the primary focuses that we looked at specifically at this grade level um was when the students are working on the problems where they have to identify multiples and factors there's a little bit of a struggle there's a fluency Gap and so as a tier one intervention that we are delivering to every student in the classrooms here we're really focusing on that to make sure we're Bridging the Gap on a piece of the content that seems to be a generalized gap for the majority of this the students and we're also increasing the amount of vertical articulation that we have in grades five all the way up through High School level math to make sure that the planning that takes place um especially in the Middle grades we find ourselves that we not only receive but we have to prepare to send and move up so we want to make sure that there's a Continuum of information being shared across all of the Gade bance to make sure that the decisions that we're making here are also best sued for where we're going to prepare to send the students to the amped program that we have in the middle school I'm happy to say that beginning with one section um with an eighth grade group a few years ago we are now up to two full sections in both seventh grade and 8th grade so we not only have a curriculum that pairs algebra with all of the other functions of Entrepreneurship and processing manufactur in and design uh we also have a concepts of algebra program for the seventh grade students that does the same and this year we were happy to procure and be able to dedicate four new PCS to those two programs in seventh and eth grade so that the students have a quicker access to be able to use the software needed to do the manufacturing process and this year we already have students selling all of the notepads that are personalized that they are able to design and build and also the eighth grade students stud this year are building the customized pouches and so the students are using the Cricut software and were very excited and a lot of that does tie into the pbsis that we're able to give back to the students in the building and my last slide for science the primary focus for academics this year was something that was a collaborative approach between myself and the staff members when we started getting together and doing some of the professional learning over the summer we really took stock inventory of what we wanted for our goals and a big push was the executive functioning skills there's a lot of layers in science classes with the internalization of content but even more so with the application of it so and in doing that it brings with notebooking Hands-On lab activities having a binder that really teaches the students organizational skills so I love the fact that it was very collaborative and that the staff had a very important role in coming up with some of these things that they wanted to focus on to make sure that they were being TurnKey to the students without those executive functioning skills and having them set a good foundation sometimes the content gets a little bit scattered so I love the fact that these were some of the non-negotiables that we really wanted to focus on and the third component being able to actually build a vocabulary a scientific vocabulary through literacy literacy is so important especially in the sciences and even when you're in math and you're communicating your information so I would be I would be doing a in disservice if we didn't incorporate more literacy into the science classrooms as well so we're incorporating a lot of informational text where students are able to read and then have conversations using vocabulary that's built into the content that we're actually going through at that time profession Al uh we started the year with doing a big inventory on safety in the classroom the teachers part are participated in a posos or a hazards Communications study uh to make sure that we are aware of what the hazards are and the important safety measures that need to take place in the classroom we also are making sure that when the students are in the room with us and doing any type of Hands-On work if it's something that the students are coming in contact with we have them completing a Google form to confirm that they have gone over the information that day with the instructor at the front of the room so we know that safety is the priority every time we're in the science classroom we have a new upside unit Earth and space in e8th grade this year we're continuing with vertical articulation in grades 5 through eight get giving them an opportunity to get together and make sure that we are all aligned with all of the standards we are also making sure that every staff member is participating in universal Design for Learning with Betsy Beck who is also a coach in the district and the complimentary component for the math and science data team is that in the Sciences we're supporting the work of the math by continuing with looking at data and making sure that we're we're improving the math fact fluency by the students working on statistics bringing in data doing graphical analysis and putting that to good use to support some of the gaps that we're seeing as the results of the the math assessment and I didn't mention it on the first two sides but the stem Parent Academy will be later this June on June 4th and the time is still being worked out to make sure we are in coordination with the fire department for the egg drought so thank you very much for having me here this evening and that's it for myself thank you hi everybody um I'm Dr Rich the supervisor of special education here at the middle school in Lynwood and here is our talent showcast looks like they're doing a really good job so I'm here to talk about our special education programming at the middle school on this slide I talk about a little bit about our specialized programs we engage in community-based instruction and the reason we do that is our students are working on both academic and functional goals and their IEPs and we give them experiences in the community to build on these skills and it's a really great program and our staff does an amazing job in helping our students in this area we also focus a lot on social skills in our self-contained programming again working to make the students to help them grow in both their academics and their functional um in our programming we work on multisensory reading instruction we've grown our multi-sensory reading instruction here at the middle school and have expanded training for teachers and have integrated it into more classrooms with uh more supplementary support and this has been through professional learning opportunities another goal in through special education and in collaboration with um the building is to create an inclusive environment so I'm really proud to discuss our social and emotional learning initiative and our Thrive initiative each year we conduct a mental health a wellness screener for our students and we work closely with our counseling staff to analyze the results of the screener and provide a multi-tiered level of supports for our students we're lucky at the middle school because we have a lot of different support um for tier one tier two and tier three we're going to be later talking about our pbsis initiative um which also coincides with our mental health initiative we've worked together with the team of teachers to create Wellness Resources and lessons that have been pushed out to staff um we have a wellness classroom and all the lessons are organized according to the castle competencies so staff always have access and are able to integrate these lessons and these resources um into their classroom we also have an area for staff Wellness Resources as well in special education we continue to offer flexible program opportunities and a full Contin um of supports which is really awesome to see as students get older and their needs and they grow and they progress and they um need different kinds of programming so our case managers do an excellent job in planning for them we work closely with us our special education coach who works with our teachers on differentiation and helping with our co- teing Pairs and developing their co- teing relationship and really bringing in our building goal of universal design for learning some professional learning goals for our special education department include IEP development which is ongoing we are always training our staff on IEP development and you know I always say it's there's always something to improve on there's always something to do better in an individualized program so we're always working on that our specialized reading has grown at the middle school as well and we've been working to promote executive functioning resources this is an area where we find uh students really need a lot of support so we've been Gathering resources and sharing with staff to help students um so this is a snapshot of some of the awesome initiatives that we're working on through special education thank you so much hi I'm Kei DWI I'm the supervisor can you hear me the supervisor of language arts and social studies both here and at lywood school so this is just a few pictures from our theme days here um the Middle School Works to foster a sense of community one of the ways is by allowing these theme days I think the bottom right you can see the teachers really appreciated the opportunity to dress like students for the day so um so I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about the work we're doing in ela and social studies here at the middle school so um as you know as a result of the njsla data one area that we focused on for improvement is our writing work um writing probably took the biggest hit during the pandemic because it was very difficult to expect students to write during virtual instruction the writing was often limited to um chat boxes short submissions um we typically expect students to write across their school day and it just became much more difficult to navigate so um data suggests you know certainly not exclusive to North Brunswick writing was the thing that posed the most challenge after the pandemic so what we did was last year e8th grade PLC did a book study on this text called the writing Revolution which basically suggests that explicit writing instruction is fundamental to writing growth so teaching students like the building blocks of writing so that their sentences make more sense that transfers to better organization of longer writing pieces and then the expectation is that writing is not taking place just in the ELA classroom but throughout the school day so um I've been able to do a lot of work across Ela and social studies with that and then the hope is that that expands throughout our building so that there's a universal language for our students so all the subject areas are expecting students to write but sometimes what we find is um the terminology is a little bit different depending on the course that the child is in so unifying that terminology for our students takes away that layer of what is the expectation in this room this course versus that course so we've done a lot of work this year around outlining uh Gathering evidence and organizing our thoughts so that we have more coherent writing pieces um we saw a lot of growth with our eighth grade students that did this work last year from the beginning of the year to the end of the year um we're tracking with common assessments um in linkit professional development in both Ela and social studies we have an implementation team that's rolling out um this initiative so we're very optimistic that we'll see growth with our writers um you know through njsla data but also just their day-to-day writing um what we expect in all of our classes is not that students are just memorizing facts but they're able to show that they are truly understanding the content and the best way to do that is through writing and through speech so we want to make sure that they're clear communicators um as Mr Slover said we're very fortunate here that we have professional Learning Community meetings every day where our teachers are able to gather to discuss best practices to discuss Trends to discuss changes that are needed to our tier one instruction to review data both njsla map data and then formative and summative data within the classrooms so we're doing a lot of that work to decide um on the spot decisions of modifications that might be helpful like in this moment we don't want to wait till next year when we get data you know at the end of the school year from njsla but what can we do with all the assessments that we're administering to modify as necessary to give our students the best instruction daytoday um we're continuing to use the program mebe which is an Adaptive program that helps our students with morphology under understanding word Parts understanding how context clues work because one of the things that research says is most prohibitive of student understanding and student comprehension of text is limited vocabulary um so instead of just teaching words to students we're teaching students how to own language and be able to dissect based on their knowledge of word parts so um students take an assessment at the beginning of fifth grade and then the program adapts to where they're at academically and gives words that are appropriate to their reading level um it's very cyclical so the words are Revisited throughout the program so that um retention is High um in these professional learning communities we're also doing a lot to ensure that our upper echelon students are being appropriately challenged as well um sometimes we look at the data and we see student deficit but we also want to see areas where we can improve and challenge our students who are ready for that opportunity um so we study work samples of students we look at um vertically at the standards so if you have a student in seventh grade who's doing really excellent work what can we use from eighth grade standards even maybe nth grade standards to appropriately challenge those students as well we're fortunate over the last couple of years we've implemented data teams here in North Brunswick um where we study classroom data and then we study Benchmark data or state testing data to identify an area that we can improve upon um for our tier one instruction because tier one instruction is going to yield the biggest impact because it's affecting all of our students so here at the middle school our first cycle we're devoting to Improvement of writing um by highlighting like their expertise in a given subject so so sometimes what we do is we assign students writing and they're unclear on how to articulate all the things that they know so we're offering scaffolds to students to get their writing started so that they're able to communicate these ideas um clearly and then grow that knowledge by additional reading um as Mr Slover said we're also able to offer intervention services we've made some changes to our intervention format here at the middle school which has allowed us to add additional pullout services in ela which is particularly helpful because then the teacher is able to meet with students in very small groups and the instruction is targeted to exactly what that child's need is so it's not just you're struggling with reading but you're struggling bless with um foundational um knowledge you're struggling with fluency you're struggling with um vocabulary development so the instruction can be very catered to what that child's individual needs are so um we're making a lot of data- driven decisions of things that we can improve upon um to reflect our students learning and the data as well we also want our students to feel relevance in what they're doing and in excitement for their learning so when we're when possible we try to bring guest speakers into classrooms we try to bring programming in so that students have um these experiences so I just wanted to highlight a couple of those for you um there's a lot of uh standards now that are addressing climate change so we have our seventh grade language arts students they're actually having this presentation tomorrow um again this year so a coral reef to classroom presentation so they can see some of the impacts of climate change because they have a writing unit that's devoted to that um um in seventh grade our eighth grade students do research around career day which basically gives them the opportunity to explore potential future careers um it's a very motivating unit because they can see what their future holds um and what we try to do is expose the students to lesser known jobs you know they know teachers they know lawyers so we try to bring in um people that have jobs that are maybe less frequently hurt and then the um speakers come in and they present just a little piece of what their day looks like we also try to present this to students in a realistic way so if you can see that map it's a little small but you know we try to talk to the students you want a virtual job do you want a job where you're in person do you want a job where you can harness your communication skills because you're a people person you know how much money do you want to make are you gonna make enough money to have that mansion that you're dreaming of doing the career that you initially thought so we're trying to give them these skills where um they're understanding the implication of the choices that they make um and a number of you came and spoke last year to our students so we were very grateful for that you know and we have a lot of members of our community that come in and speak as well former students you know um members of the North Brunswick Community which is really nice um we took our eighth graders to see you know a play for Midsummer Night stream so that they you know some of our students don't have the opportunity to go to events like that outside of the school so we're giving them those um cultural experiences and then we also have our literacy night event every year where we try to equip parents with things that they can do to support their students literacy development at home games and activities to um spark the engagement of literacy um one that's not up there is we have our annual spelling B so we actually have a very busy day tomorrow we have our Coral representation and then our spelling be is tomorrow night so we're excited to share with you who the winner is and hopefully they can represent us at the county level again this year um and then in social studies and in Civics um much like Mrs lamagra said uh literacy is you know critical for our students success in their lives so we have moved very far away from memorization of content and social studies and focusing on main ideas citing evidence taking a position making claims um about the things that you've learned and trying to foster a connection between what happened in history and why are we still studying it today how how is it relevant to your life now um so what you'll see if you're in our social studies classes is an increased level of collaboration discussion because we want the students to have those conversations around what does this mean to me what does this mean to my community um we've done amazing things with the Yonder patches but students still go right to their phones after school and they get all of their news from social media so what we try to teach them in both social studies and Ela is to become critical consumers of information where they're looking at everything they're reading and watching with a critical eye you know um unfortunately there's always kind of a an author slant to everything that's published so we're trying to teach um our students these media literacy skills where they're making intelligent choices as they're reading and consuming information um as I mentioned before the social studies department is also partnering with Ela to improve writing through this writing Revolution and you know I'm hopeful that that's something we can do as a building next year um and we're looking for our students to become involved in their communities you know if you're unhappy with something don't just complain about it but how can you become actively involved and advocating for change that will help both you and others so much like Ela we try to involve the community last year we had an amazing are you ready Rucker Civics fair so this organization from Ruckers came to show all of our students that take Civics um how they can become informed uh participants of their community and then in seventh grade in ela the students all read The Diary of Anne Frank some of our students read the actual diary and others read the play adaptation and it's become a cross-curricular unit because our social studies teachers pre-teach a lot of the background knowledge so that students go with an understanding of what was going on at that time so last year we actually had a presentation from a few grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors um it was very powerful the students felt you know connected to this very um important troubling experience that's happened in history so we try to bring um the experiences of the classroom alive to our students through these experiences so thank you so much as always for your support good evening my name is Amy rafano assistant principal seventh grade class few pictures from our pep rallies we uh have about we have three pep rallies a year coinciding with our our athletic season so that we can showcase our athletes as well as have all of our students engage in some healthy competitions some fun games uh music the band plays and then um we always have a PBIS message something about positive behavior in the school which is which is a great a great way to uh get this kids to start thinking about you know what's expected of them and how they can help uh change and shift the culture of how we treat one another in the building and that's really what it's all about we uh we strive to get our our students to think about how they would feel if something like that was happening to them and have them take a pause and and and think really truly how um we treat each other uh some uh some of the things that we're doing here with clubs and activities we have over 23 clubs and uh act uh for students to explore they you can go ahead and and turn to the next slide please or am I doing that myself I'm doing that myself all right there we go uh we have uh 2 through clubs for students to explore and experience anywhere from art uh music robotics uh various community service activities that take place within each Club but also on their own standing freely with uh County and local um organizations healthy competitions math uh we do robotics competitions debate a very popular Club nature we actually had a a a guest speaker for the nature club today they were talking about be safety so whenever there's a bear around our our kids will be uh ready to uh address that that potential attack we we offer a lot more you saw some pictures in there about yoga we that's a a club we're piloting right now and it really is a very cool uh club that the kids get in there and they really get a chance to just kind of uh just relax and and and and de-stress as they say so we're piloting that club uh this year we did um add anime very popular chess club and and nature like I said roughly On Any Given Tuesday Wednesday or Thursday we'll have 85 to 120 kids participating in a club uh so we appreciate those late buses because without those L late buses Mrs so those those children would not be able to participate um uh other various activities are taking place like I mentioned the pep rally we're having our attendance assemblies at the end of the uh second marking period and then we do our high honor rooll and honor roll assemblies and kids really love that they love to be recognized for for working hard um our National Junior Honor Society is going going to uh will be uh begin their after school tutoring and their lunch tutoring program and it's uh peers helping peers I think which make u a lot of sense uh here in this building um and they get to see each other throughout the the building's small enough so that when you're engaging with with kids whether it's in a sporting activity or in clubs or in tutoring or things like that you get to see them over and over again and it just it builds a nice um a nice feeling of of welcomeness and and just belonging you know no matter what level you're at uh terms of competition or academics um a couple other things I wanted to talk about is um our mentoring program we have 15 mentors those are our adults in the building our staff members and about 20 mentees right now uh their their relationships are are can last throughout the whole year can last a couple of weeks uh they can meet for five six minutes they can do a check-in uh they can communicate just with a thumbs up or like you know or yeah I need to see you now kind of a thing but it usually is done in a in a very um casual situation it's not a set appointment um although it could be if if need be but uh it really is is a nice casual relationship where they can kind of talk about how do I how do I talk to my teacher about this how do I um you know tell my mom that I'm not doing so well in this class or offering suggestions and advice anything and they all know the mentees know that if it's anything more serious than that that we are oblig ated to to get other other um people involved uh so and they they agree to that which is nice we've developed a really uh new but nice relationship with NJ for Schools they're actually going to be running one of our parenty uh in in January connections matter uh they are uh in a position to come into the school and actually do some small group work with us with their expertise uh we go through the protocol where we uh reach out to parents and make sure it's okay that their student participates in this outside outside vendor uh relationship some of the other events that we uh that students and staff are involved in obviously our week of ex uh respect antiviolence Awareness Week door decorating con contest we do a number of food drives locally and through the county our papis 5K run uh in memory of uh one of our dear teachers from ly Lynnwood Miss papis and um and we do some work with our um North brunic Township youth Alliance a number of our students in this building are are active members so we work closely with Luan Benson on on some of those uh activities you've heard PBIS PBIS is a uh a a platform uh a computer program for lack of a better word uh that we load and and merge with our uh Genesis system we we feed Genesis feeds the information into a PBIS where students can see real time and the immediate acknowledgement for their positive behaviors in school so uh the goal at least one of the goals that I see is that uh we're modeling positive behavior we're modeling that kindness in the building whether it's helping someone through the hallway directing them a pencil uh you know just being kind treating others the way we want to be treated and then to be able to see that you're re reward I don't you're rewarded for that behavior and that motivates you to continue that behavior and that may motivate you as a young adult to stop somebody from not doing the right thing and and to hopefully shift that that culture and and shift the behavior of the students uh they're constantly reminded uh we have uh posters throughout the building that we've hung about positive behavior in the KRC in the auditorium in the lunchroom in the classroom in the hallways uh in the stairways during drills we have a matrix that uh each student is exposed to and and staff refers to uh of how they can earn points and those points turn into uh reclaiming them for uh turning them in for rewards we have a student that's out on our um Marquee out front she wanted to use her points because she wanted to see her name and lights so we did that for her um we offer um a fast pass for lunch so you're not waiting you're not the last person to get lunch you're the first person to get lunch uh some not we do some tangible items those those um plugs for your Crocs we we do eraser we do pens you know we do food you know through the cafeteria so there's a lot to offer we do you know a free pass to an event that we might be running we're we're running another PBIS event in February our first event happened December 20th on that half day before we offered um re you know turnning your points to get a ticket to the movies to play games in a game room or to play volleyball and we had 35% participation in that so for being up in live and running for less than you know a month we've we've done some really good things with it and the goal here again is to have us as a community you know change and and treat each other the way we want to be treated and to model that Behavior Uh throughout the the school day and and to carry it on um and I think that's uh pretty much it for me thank you very much I appreciate it I'm going to go ahead and uh introduce um Mr Feliz who's going to talk a little bit about some other things that are going on in seventh grade but here's a picture from our purple for papis the community participating in the uh papis 5K okay Mr Poli thank you good evening everyone I am uh NOA Feliz I am the uh seventh grade Dean also hip specialist and school test coordinator and I'm going to highlight and talk a little bit about some of the events of our seventh grade and some of our uh special initiatives so actually this year we were able to attend uh what's called the day of dialogue which um uh this year occurred at our Educational Services Commission building over in Piscataway and I was able to interview I want to say about 25 maybe 30 students and we selected uh 16 students and uh it's a program that focuses on diversity equity and inclusion what I liked about it it resembled um it resembled some of the professional developments that we go to and it was very professional environment for the students and uh you would have been very proud of them they they they shared confidently they talked about some difficult issues in small groups and they were also uh bold enough to to speak in the in the open Forum on the microphone in front of everyone so it was it was a very very uh program that I think left an impact on the students and I gave them some certificates and I called them to the office and they were very proud to receive their certific ific Ates and oh you know my mom's going to let me hang this up in the on the refrigerator so it was it was a very very good program another program that I like to highlight is the um the power program and this is my third year working with them and it's an initiative um where we have a the police officers will come into the building and we have about 40 students that meet uh once a month on the Wednesday right after school and um this the program really emphasizes uh just making good choices making good decisions and creating scenarios where the students can talk about uh they can role play and talk about what if I find myself in this situation how will I handle it and we have some really good success stories of a student that really gave us a run for for our money uh uh for two years and now she's at the high school and she's been a regular at this program and now we're hearing things like she's uh uh resolving PE conflicts and and and and encouraging other students to make good choices so this this program is really having a a good effect on our on our student population um headed by um Tangi cob which is one of our community uh someone that's very involved in the community and she secured a grant for this particular program along with uh Professor uh uh officer um um ay which is very instrumental in in bringing in some guest speakers uh for for this particular program and I also want to highlight something a little bit different that we did this year was with our orientation for span for for for for families in August that we do every every other year for the seventh graders or every year for the seventh graders um Jan atino was nice enough to put me on parent Square for um Lynwood school so I was able to reach out to a number of those parents and I was able to find on Genesis that about 114 students identify as having Spanish as a home language that's out of 371 and just regular contacts sending regular messages uh we were able to fill up one of the classrooms uh with with Spanish speaking families Spanish speaking parents and we were really able to um just highlight and talk about uh everything School related in in in in in completely in Spanish and now I have uh my my phone my phone goes off regularly and I get me quite a few messages in Spanish asking for assistance from uh the buses to uh you know someone's I'm my son's having problem with someone in class so I I I I get quite a few messages every day but I think it's a great way to connect with the community that's usually timid and scared to approach us and let us know that they have issues and the last two areas that I I'm going to highlight are um our social event which is a great opportunity for our students to to just kind of unwind and dance and we'll have a DJ with lights and it kind of goes away from the traditional remember the school dance where a group of students would stand on one side and another group of students would stand on the other side you know this gives them an opportunity we also open up the gym so they have an opportunity to to uh participate in sports uh volleyball and and and then you see them you know it's opportunity for them to dress up they some of them their ties are too short short or their stockings are too big and it's the opportunity for them to start uh developing how to dress professionally so I think it's it's a great uh outlet for them and the last uh event I want to talk about is our uh our seventh grade uh field day uh outdoor events it's it's a it's it's become a tradition and the students always look forward to being able to be outside and run around and throw things and and just have a good time okay thank you hi I'm nicolea Tori I am the interim eighth grade Dean uh Mr Feliz thank you for taking the mic off of the stand because I thought it was going to be too high for me so thank you um so I'm going to talk uh tonight about uh two programs that our eighth graders uh take part in the first one is the North Brunswick Municipal Alliance committee uh they reached out to us uh we host a leadership uh mentorship series or they host it we take part in it um it's always uh a really nice um series for our students to take part in historically it takes place in February uh they usually reach out to us uh mid January end of January uh but historically it does take place in February uh 25 female and 25 male students participate um the other grade level uh that they're mentoring with is our 11th grade students uh that are going into 12th grade uh they each participate in two different sessions to two different sessions are the first one is all the females the second one is all the males and then the last session uh they're all together uh they're going to focus on making connections with the upper classmen uh build leadership skills um and just have opportunities to have mentors as they enter High School uh we all know how important mentors are so that's a really nice segue for the eighth graders as they're moving up uh and then they dive into deeper conversations um and education on vaping marijuana underage drinking um and it's just for them to have somebody as they move up uh peer tutoring uh it's beginning this month it actually began yesterday our eighth grade uh peer tutoring sessions uh take place on Wednesdays uh during our lunch a which is our uh eth grade lunch the program is basically designed just to support our students in their content areas and to provide New Perspective on skills being taught in the classroom other than just their teachers um they have a peer that they meet with um that helps support them um and as we know having peer support can enhance student learning and comprehension as well as having positive benefits for both the tutor and the Tut so we're off to day one we're off and running but so far it's you know the kids have enjoyed it and it's been successful thank you so much next up is Mr phry thank you Mr Tori uh H I'm Rick felt I'm the assistant pitcher for the eth grade I just want to say thank you to miss Lori as we get older in life myself I don't like change that much with M Marsh going out on turny weave had a little of anxiety about this year but I got you've been amazing for the eth grade I want to say thank you for everything you've done there's been no disruption and you offering a lot of wonderful ideas so I want to say thank you for that so I really appreciate everything you've done so far um obviously some of the eighth grades the activities we do we have a lot of fun activities we have our field semi-formal during the year which obviously Mr phel attested to definitely takes a little while but then you know the kids definitely start the Ming a little bit so it was very fun day fun night we have the field day at the end of the year obviously have the Eagle Landing Fields trip which is right down the road here on davidon Mill It's a Wonderful event hopefully it doesn't rain this year we've been very successful the last couple years and then we have the class night June 20th so a lot of wonderful events coming up and one of the many things I one of the one of the things I do support here at the school is the Athletics and as we know there's a huge correlation between academic success and the positive involvement in different aspect of the school so we have 15 teams here we have the football we have the soccer and the soccer we have the cross country and the ch leading in the fall and then we had the new sport we opened up three two years ago was the girls girls volleyballs in the fall correct and then we have the wrestling boys basketball girls basketball and cheerleading in the winter and then in the spring we have the baseball the softball both lacrosses and the boys volleyball so as you can see our numbers have increased mightily so the amount of students that are involved in sports is fantastic here and some of the highlights we had this year our boy soccer team was fantastic there 111 in one season I believe yep and the girls volleyball first year you know listen baby steps but the amount of students that are involved in the volleyball and the volleyball is the one of the sports that doesn't have a huge feeder program in many districts so I don't want to be like baseball I've very involved in like a lot of kids if you don't do baseball younger it's tough to acmate yourself and be successful later on life but the nice thing about the volleyball is that most of the students can come out and be very successful on that so it's a very it's as this age it's very nice to have a something you can have an outlet you could be off positive at school so we have a lot of kids performing in the volleyball so that's fantastic and then our cross country team we had drisha prip Kumar who finished second out of 77 students this year in the GMC so fantastic so a lot of wonderful thing about the um the North Brunswick Township Middle School athletic program hopefully it follow suit to the high school and here are some of our teams obviously we have our soccer team our girls volleyball team and that's Risha who is our cross country Runner so fantastic job to all them Mr SL Title [Applause] One all right we're going to bring this baby in for a landing um as you know we receive a fair amount of Title One funding okay a lot of that is not really visible to the naked eye during the day but these things are okay um our parenty that we do during the course of the year to bring parents in and talk about relevant topics today okay uh attendance is always an issue it's very tough to post pandemic It's just tough to get people out we've offered things over zoom and got nobody and I'm like man come on you could be on your couch but we we keep trying we keep trying that's the important part social emotional learning groups again so important to develop those skills and that resiliency in students today all right and we do that and of course our Su our success tutoring program right on the horizon as you know tomorrow night is our spelling be right and I tell you what man those those late rounds of that thing are vicious right I'm not kidding um but it's it's impressive it really is the discipline that the students have career day as we talked about grade level tuneups which are basically assemblies where well for the eighth grade we kind of have to Ward them off of the middle school version of senioritis and remind them it's not June yet you know we have a ways to go but we give them some general reminders in case we're starting to slack a little bit PBIS Honor Society inductions which will be March Mr feno Honor Society in March okay one of my favorite nights I mean one of my favorite nights um when we honor uh you know our highest functioning students rightfully so it's a great night great ceremony our spring concerts our musical production is called on no the name um once on an island okay it is a Take On The Little Mermaid okay or it might have been the pre the precursor to The Little Mermaid but anyway um our drama our drama group is just grown and grown and grown over the years we're expecting a great show this year that's March 28th that I do know science fair annual art show Athletics and athletic award that we offer at the end of every season and of course our seventh and eighth great events as you just heard about you are all more than welcome to attend any and all of things and these things and even some things that aren't even listed here you know we're very proud of what we offer we'd love to have you honestly okay um I think that's our story and we're sticking to it okay once again thank you for everything thank you for coming out happy to have you all right um as we're getting the screen up we just really want to thank all of you Mr cover and your team for doing such a great presentation for filling Us in and updating us on all the the the new initiatives that have have come come come up to date since we saw you last two years ago um for also digging into your test scores um and showing us how you're working to improve that through the different subject areas and then also showing us the social emotional side and the support side that you know Middle School is is a tough time and I I do not look back fondly on my middle school years uh personally I don't know if anybody here actually does or if that's even thing but I would imagine here there probably are a lot of kids who really um find this to be the right place for them to grow and learn so thank you on behalf of the board I also just want to say thank you I you know think back to my middle school years and some of your faces come to my mind so to see you know you all these years later it's very special and I think like Mrs shoka said sometimes you know digging into to and speaking about the testing and some of the test scores and and the improvements um you know it's tough and and we recognize that um but one of our goals and one of our district goals is our academic achievement of course um that's something that you know is very important to the nine of us up here uh important to Mrs tra's cabinet and to all of you so anything that we can do to support you all um in order to improve on that goal we're here for for you and we appreciate everything that you know you do every day to keep this building uh running and we look forward to attending some of those events as well so thank you definitely thank you we're fortunate for you all too can I so absolutely Mr sure I just want to just kind of follow up and just say thank you for um just a really a wonderful group of uh students that you have um as you know I run buddy ball and uh nearly half of my volunteers um each year uh come from the Middle School seventh and eth grade and um they are some phenomenal kids um and last year I guess we missed that we weren't here um you know what I really forgot to to let you know that uh uh at that time eth grade aani Gupta she was was uh she had volunteered enough um that she qualified and and won a uh the presidential volunteer service award bronze level last year so um yeah you guys have some great students so anyone else thanks Mr W appreciate that at this time we uh have a short agenda here but we'll move to item number six it's uh an open session is there any old business or new business there is not this evening okay we'll just to page two at this time we we will review our agenda as per our regular meetings that we have at the end of each month we receive these agendas well in advance um and we have the time to review them as we have for this specific conference meeting agenda um so at this time we will look to page two and page three and then wrapping up on page four this evening um so at this time we'll have a public public session on agenda items only if anyone from the public would like to come up and speak um we ask that you just state your name you'll be given 3 minutes uh to speak on agenda items only seeing none can I please have a motion to close the public portion of the meeting so moved second all in favor I anyone opposed this uh session is closed thank you uh Mr Lori would you please take item number 10 please consense agenda Madam president I'll move to approve the following consent agenda items pertaining to curriculum as listed second I will take roll call uh Mr Ali yes Mr Carter yes Miss James yes Miss Keith yes Mr Lori yes Dr Patel yes Mr Singh yes Miss to yes and Mr W yes all the Motions are approved thank you this time we'll flip to page three and we will have a public session on any matter at this time if anyone from the public would like to come up and speak uh we will give you three minutes we just ask to state your name and um you'll be given time to speak on any manner uh seeing none can I please have a motion to close this portion so moved second second all in favor I anyone opposed this session is closed thank you and at this time we will move to go into closed session whereas section eight of the open public meetings act chapter 231 pl1 1975 permits the exclusion of the public from a meeting in certain circumstances es and whereas this public body is of the opinion that such circumstances presented exist now therefore be it resolved by the northship Board of Education that the public shall be excluded from discussion of an action upon the here and after specified subject matters the general nature of the subject matter to be discussed is as followed Personnel matters it is anticipated at this time that the above stated subject matter shall be made public at such time as the need for non-disclosure no longer exists this resolution shall take effect immediately can I please have a motion to go into Clos session second all in favor I anyone opposed we can go into close session2 e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e right at this time uh we will return to open session can we please have a moot a motion so moved I'm sorry who was the first m m oh Mr W thank you so much Mr Ali we are back in session um all in all in favor I anyone oppos thank you we are in session thank you uh and at this time we will will adjourn our meeting so moved second I'm sorry it's Mr Carter correct yep thank you all in favor I anyone opposed we adjourned thank you all you