You're live. >> Okay. Good evening everyone. Welcome to the Pasc Valley Regional High School District Board of Education regular meeting. 7:30 p.m. It is March 16, 2026,
and we are here at Pasc Hills High School, Pasca Hills Media Center. During this regular meeting, two opportunities are going to be provided for citizens to make comments. In order for a citizen to make comment, they must be physically present at the meeting.
During the first opportunity, early on the agenda, comments regarding agenda items are invited. The second opportunity will occur just prior to adjournment when residents may address general comments to the board. Persons wishing to speak must upon being
recognized rise state their name and town of residents and comments will be limited to issues. If personal remarks or discredited statements are made, the presiding officer shall require the speaker to sit down.
Okay, we have a call to order and a roll call. >> Miss Stephins >> present. >> Meron here. >> Miss here. Mrs. Long >> here. >> Miss Kelly
>> here. >> Mrs. Martin >> here. >> Mr. St. >> Present. >> Mrs. Sparky here. >> Mr. >> Here, >> this time I ask you to all rise for the flag
to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands one nation indivisible. >> Public announcements. by the providing officer. Adequate notice of this meeting has been provided by mailing copies of
said notice to the record, filing copies of said notice of the municipal clerks of Hillsdale, Montale, Riverdale, and Wil, and publishing said notice in the record on July 2nd, 2025. This time we're going to turn to item
four, routine matters, um board president report. Very briefly, um I just wanted to thank all of our board members for all their diligent e efforts over the past two months. We've been busy serving on
several committees um including governance, personnel, finance, negotiation, policies. In other business, on February 24th, 2026, Dr. Lily Lao was confirmed as the commissioner of the New Jersey
Department of Education, nominated by our new governor show. In this position, she will oversee the state's public education system, leading Governor Cheryl's education agenda. We look forward to seeing all that she will do
to advance public education and the achievement of our 1.4 million public students in New Jersey. This time I'd like to uh welcome and our interim superintendent report. >> Thank you. I'm going to start off my
report by uh announcing our validatoran saludiatorans in our schools. Um at Pasc Hills, our validatoran is Madison Espinosa and we have co- saludiatorans
Nina Indubella and Katherine Glass at Pasak Valley. Our valictorian is Jolie Ross and our saludiatoran is Ming Yang Chen. Since our last quarterback meeting, focal point of the district has been to
complete the 2026 2027 school budget. Um there were numerous challenges, the greatest of being the increased expenses that we face. I want to thank the entire administrative team for their input. Um Cindy will be presenting the preliminary budget tonight. Uh she deserves a lion
share of the credit for putting the budget together. There was constant tweaking uh working on state formulas to ensure that all the pieces came together. A lot of input and effort went into this process and I want to thank Cindy for all of her efforts. Thank you.
>> Tomorrow is not such a fun day for our juniors. It starts the NJ uh uh NJ um GPA testing. Uh that is a mandated graduation requirement testing of the state. Uh we uh for the first time I believe we are bringing in all our
students at the beginning of the day. Um and this was an effort to increase our instructional time for every student. U this change did require significant planning on part of the building administrators and some um instructional adjustments for our staff. So, I want to
thank thank them and then let them know I'm grateful for their cooperation. Uh the district has been notified by the NJ uh New Jersey Department of Education that we did not qualify for title one funds for next school year. Um we did not meet the requirement of having a
significant number of students eligible for free or reduced lunch. Um so we are in the process of appealing that decision hoping to get those funds back for next uh school year. some updates on construction uh milestone. Uh I originally uh wrote that
it continues to move forward and then of course I jinxed myself this afternoon. I was notified that um a wire was inadvertently cut an exterior wire and we lost some power to some wireless our phones and our our lips. So we're
hopefully uh getting that fixed immediately. Um but we have made progress as far as the first floor construction. um that will be finished up then over our April break um as far as the first floor and the ramp is now being able to proceed since we have
warmer weather and we can pour uh the concrete necessary for the ramp. Uh Pascat Valley's cafeteria is up and running now. Uh it was been a was a long time a process. So we're just happy to have uh food being prepared in our
kitchen and served to our students and staff. uh Pasc uh Valley's auditorium is about 90 95% complete. Uh work still needs to be done on some lighting sound. Uh and the um screen due to some back orders, but we do have the students in
there rehearsing for their school play um that will happen later in April. And we've accepted a bid on a HBAC installation room 104 here at Hills. I believe to tonight we also have um a bid
acceptance for a rooftop universe bas. I want to congratulate all the winter teams that just recently completed their seasons u for all the successes that they had and I want to wish the best to our spring teams that are now beginning to have their uh practices. Probably
most of them are are indoor based on weathers but um that's typical in the springtime. Both musicals will be occurring shortly. Uh, Hills will be performing the Adams family and that starts this Thursday. So, if you haven't gotten your tickets, please go out and get them.
And Valley has chosen to perform Mama Mia and that will open up on April 23rd. the Hill Valley Usorium. I think that a coalition will be presenting um
project um a show for um parents, a workshop for parents called protecting our kids, the many dangers of social media. That is going to be on April 8th and it will start at 7 o'clock and it will be in the nose auditorium. uh you'll be receiving
information uh through our social media on that program. Uh pleased to announce very happy and excited I'm sure the Hills Chamber choir because they were selected to perform the national anthem at a New York Yankees game. Uh so that will happen on May 21st. So very uh
happy to see that happening. And as a reminder, we are on spring break which will start on Saturday, March 28th and run through Monday, April 6. I hope there's plenty of sunshine during that time for everyone to enjoy the time off
from school. Thank you, >> Mr. Ph. Um, on to committee reports. Um, Martin, we actually met twice. So, I'm just going to just very briefly go over our February 5th meeting first. Um, we had
our governance and personnel. I was president, Miss Mo was present, Miss Stephins, Miss Ris, Mr. Phillips, uh Mr. Puchio, and Dor was also present. Uh we went through our agenda with the personnel. We addressed um some parent
concerns and emails that we're receiving um with some of the coaching. We also got some information on the year evaluations um how they were progressing um and what they were looking like. Uh we also talked about some of the park academy
and region 2 updates and then in governance um we kind of talked a little bit about public comment statements um addressing whether or not there's going to be changing district names um
possible proposals for um sponsorships um housing projects um I think that's about came up to and then in our March 3rd meeting um again I was president all the same
people um and um we talked about um some of the positions that for next year regarding the park academy and the region 2 updates again got some updates
about um the tenure positions and about governance moving forward. All committee um members are being asked to attend meetings and uh we're going to be taking attendance and sharing out the
attendance um who was able to make it and and was unable to make it. Uh I think that was the gist of it. talk a little about the budget and how that might impact uh this year's Thank you. >> Thank you, M. Martin. On to finance and
facilities. M >> Thank you. Um so, since our last board meeting, we have had three finance and facilities committee meetings. On Monday, February 9th, we had our first budget update of the year. Mrs. Kurt gave us the budget update and she went
over how the district had historically prepared the budget. We went over preliminary numbers for the 2026 to 2027 budget. The most impact has been in the healthcare adjustment. There has been an approximately 30% healthcare premium
increase in New Jersey state healthcare plan, which is a very significant increase. And due to benefit reform laws that were enacted in 2020, the district absorbs even more of those costs now than in the past. This is one of the main reasons for the budget being as
difficult and as tight as it is for many district including but absolutely not limited to our district. This means difficult tradeoffs and concessions between staffing programs and benefit costs. We also discussed areas of consideration for savings which
historically has not been something we as a district have really had to do. We also had an update on the closings of region 2 and Park Academy. Then Mr. Phillips gave us an update on facilities where we talked about milestones, the PB kitchen and auditorium and the upcoming
referendum. Our next meeting was on Wednesday, February 25th, where we once again had an update on the budget and referendum. For the referendum, we discussed the preliminary requests and we talked about getting tours of both schools to better understand the
facility needs. Our latest finance and facilities committee meeting was on Wednesday, March 9th. We first had a facilities update from Mr. Robert Donahghue about present and upcoming
projects. We then looked at the referendum and what the updated request numbers were and solidified plans for the board of ed to tour the buildings. We talked about milestones which is our 18 to 21 program that has grown to 15
students for the 2025 to 2026 year and we looked at the program costs and tuition. Once again we went over numbers for the budget but at that time we were still waiting for the state aid numbers which we have since gotten. I would really like to thank Mrs. Kirk for the
amazing job she has done with our budget. She walked into a really difficult situation and has really risen to the challenge with a fresh set of eyes. We as a board are very grateful to her and also to Mr. Phillips because he has been there to mentor and help Mrs.
Kirk with the years of experience he has under his belt. So we thank you both. >> Thank you. Um on to the curriculum committee. Um Miss Ker. >> Thank you Miss Stephen. Good evening
everyone. It's nice to see everybody here and for those of you watching, I'm going to deliver the curriculum, technology, and instruction report. Um, so the committee met on February 10th. Yes, thank you. Thank you. February
10th. Uh, so it's been a little over a month, so bear with me here. Uh, the topics that we discussed, we talked about PLC's, we talked about regional focused goals, and much of what I'm going to say you are actually going to witness yourself tonight in um in a
presentation by Dr. Reese Russo. Um so stay tuned. Um we talked about culture and climate and how it's uh it's been supported in the schools such as the multicultural festival that's happening in Hills in spring. Uh Valley was in the
fall. We talked a little bit about the beloved community project on MLK day and Earth Day learning about our world which is coming up. Um we also really want to emphasize an excitement for learning. More to come on that. Um we talked about
technology the goals that we have for tech um which are about teaching teachers about the apps apps that are free apps that are paid all the different kinds of AI that's out there for teachers um to help them with their instruction. We talked about cyber
security, student data, privacy, um, class link which rolled out this year. Um, we talked a little bit about building lessons for AI and AI ethics of use. Let's see, we talked about some grants. So, we have the AI grant that is
now closed. More on that in the presentation. Um, we have a climate change grant out there. Biology lessons with preschoolers. That sounds exciting. And then we also have a third grant out there. It's the neuro education grant
which is how to use brain science to support teaching and learning. Um we also dabbled a little bit in talking about the rankings hill and valley related exclusively to AP exams. Um seniors that took exams, how many got a how many multiple I believe that's going
to be in the presentation tonight as well. Thank you Dr. Russo. And um a lot of the information is all the way from 2023. So, that's also something to look about if we're talking about rankings. Um, beyond that, I believe we're going
to get a lot more information tonight. So, that's what we spoke about. The next meeting coming up is actually this Wednesday, March 18th. >> Thank you, Miss Power. Um, now on to negotiations and that is um, Miss
>> Thank you. So, our uh negotiations for this school year is with the Pascat Valley Regional um support staff associations and we had the two negotiation meetings since our last board meeting. The first was on Wednesday, February 11th. During that
meeting, we discussed uh when we last negotiated with the PBRSSA what the terms of that contract were and what proposed changes we may want to negotiate this year. The second meeting was on Wednesday, March 11th. And during that meeting, we went over the entire
contract and what changes we were going to propose in detail. And we hope to have our first meeting in person um in the next couple of weeks, I think it is. And um an update on that. Miss on to our
student reports. First off is Stephanie Young from PA Hills. >> Okay. Hi. Um so for classroom items classroom item number one on March 5th 2026 French classes had the opportunity to go on trip to go back Canada
recipient students practice their best speaking skills and preceding cultural judges and explored various landscapes. Students enjoyed their time snowshoing snow tubing and coloring with one another eating at a farm and even traveling to the mall to go ice
cine. Overall, the trip is a great experience for the kids to enjoy the rich landscapes and dishes all across the lesson number 10. In the honors course, Miss Rossy advised the field trip to the Thrive Senior Learning Center. There the students taught in
their elderly skills. The art therapist at Thrive led a talked students and senior residents on our historical religious signific wall hangings out of clay. The students guided the residents in shaping the form
and using techniques to attach decorations properly. The trip was a major success for students and residents building connections to the articular items. Item number one. On Saturday, February 28th, 2026, students travel to the Princeton science competition that
competed with one with one another across the region. Questions vary for biology, chemistry, electricity, physics, environmental sciences, mathematics, and astronomy. To practice for this tournament, Miss Mac allows students to practice after school in their classroom law competitions
and throughout these last couple weeks. Teamwork collect extra shoes to provide fresh clean water in Baso. Students tried to retain shoes to accomplish this goal by placing across the school until March 3rd.
On March 5th, 2026, students were featuring a news at a shark tank event at Carolina University for social entrepreneurship projects to benefit African and South American communities. Following this, team is looking forward to other plans. coming this March uh
March 20th 2026 team for those interested in attending a benefit for dinner that will be posted on their homes. Here students will have the opportunity to dress up and raise money with baskets. On March 22nd, 2026 hopes to have 60 volunteers to hit their goal of packing 10,000 meals in two
hours. Earlier this year, this organization partnered with Rising as Hungry to successfully distribute food for those in need. And now they to do this again from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. The black student union has been a busy
club these last couple weeks with three guest speakers and interview with the first guest speaker. Students listened to a presentation on a practice as the founder and president of GW healthcare communications consultancy that helps pharma biotech and health
connect innovation to your world. Following this the collaborated with the women of business club to listen to the RCA signed recording artist and songwriter Jordan Cox and entrepreneur Dr. Rel Cox. Students received insight into their platforms and their internal
strength internal strength to see change. On Thursday by Steve Harvey hosted a family food competition where students had a blast as freshman the freshman of the jolly juniors compete to score
the most um points to win the crowns. And to honor Black History Month, students listened to the fun facts in between questions and were asked to answer questions such as the most popular African-American influences. To sum it up, there was an amazing spirit from the snacks, cheers, and kills
pride. Athletic Athletic Survey on February 286 students managed to qualify for the regional tournament Max finalist and MZ and Zo earned third place medals on March 7th 206
and took place in the region tournament placed six and was four finalist in the women's wrestling program on March 1st 2016 Ashley also took six at this tournament. The
following week fourth at the region one tournament are going to be the first girls qualifier in the program's history. Overall, the wrestling team ended with a 17 to 10 score and critical shot who went into
the team for the last four years a winter track and field has to be successful with the help of the new head coach. Junior Isabella was awarded second team all county for the long jump event and Kira Hickey was
awarded second team all county for the six last dedication from the team coach James Reed and both for the state of champs team had a successful season
with the help of coach Al team throughout season four who 1930 points and junior Brian Charles success scored the highest game points toward
competition. Thanks to seniors Michael Brian but also for the big uh moving on to academic awards. So for modeling on March 26
University for starters received the honorable mention representing the delegation of the United Kingdom in the UN security council and won honorable mention for representation of United Kingdom in the economics and financial committee. And
lastly, uh, freshman George Miller won the most award representing the delegation of Guatemala in the US security council. Overall, the model had a successful year winning honorable mention and security council, but also the most security council.
So um from March 3rd 2026 to March 13th had the opportunity to attend the trip to Atlanta competition for an international and so the past team was fortunate enough to have 12 members moving on to
the international career development conference specifically sorry want to recognize seniors Adams and Kyle Hannah and also junior Islam and also Gabrielle
and debating in the Northland High School debate on February 25th. second place award in addition to also just for other
competition and there's going to be another debate that's going to be sorry there's going to be uh there was two GB debates 26 and also July 2026 and the last varsity debate will be held
here at Hills on March 25th So also the last and hills won first place in STEM competition held at Bernard school research circuit competition where they had the
building materials to construct because they're always a little too includes large. >> Thank you, Stephanie. Um, on to Pasc Valley High School. Maline Valley's
250th birthday. The club served a special presentation inviting in real life reactive both history class number two and Mr. History class and
Dr. J. to focus on what happened and speculate on what might be over the next few days. a member of the Valley Spanish National Art Society was selected to receive
$1,000 demonstrated a high level of proficiency in language and was selected out of March 6. The executive council hosted blood drive
and faculty members has been hosting the annual budget. Thank you all for members of the National Elementary School. The National Elementary School students with
the joints Christian is presenting a buzzing on April 11 at 10 a.m. in group 22 at Pasville. Participants will learn about honeybee biology based
and have the option of using PB club suits and going into hives and observe the inner activities of the honey. We know the group of residents, students or faculty that are valid for adult sign
to our newly as the company is currently in active rehearsals and set for our production of tickets and additional information available at ww
and one of my friends Um, it's congratul to secure a second place finish for this remarkable accomplishment. Thank you for all for all our trip. We have to travel with so
backet items. The pass wrestling team has had a record setting season. They were the TCJ pride tournament champions champions the big dual champions
county tournament champions the NJAA North state champions and the district champions. Furthermore, this season had incredible at the boys and girls for the boys got third champag
for the girls first ever district finalist got second and got cohes Steve and Terry earned the coach of year award for district team
most ever six wrestul on being named first team. Amanda also participates class for being named county girls of the year. Fun fact is during the week of worship
celebrated class events throughout the week to raise awareness and fundraising for classes. We kicked off the PSA video each class and advertisements for ways to get involved. All grades also decorate the hallway
with a valley of great jobs all my leprechauns. >> Thank you. Um, okay. On to agenda item five minutes. Resolve that the Pasc Valley Regional High School District Board of Education at the recommendation of the interim superintendent approve
the following Pasc Valley Regional High School District Board of Education. Um, can I have a motion? >> Any discussion? There is none. >> Yes. Mrs. Ross. >> Yes. >> M. Kelly.
>> Yes. >> Mrs. Martin. >> Mr. Sus. >> Mrs. >> Yes. >> Mr. >> Yes. >> Miss. >> Yes.
Moving on to agenda number six, presentations. Our first presentation will be uh discussed by Miss Kirk um regarding the tenative 2026 2027 budget.
Good evening everyone. Tonight I'll be presenting the 2026 2027 budget. First I want to thank everyone that's been involved in the process superintendent the board and finance
committee for helping with this process. So first our budget process the board superintendent and school business administrator begin talking about next year's budget in August or September. Our budget managers submit all of their
budget requests the day before Thanksgiving typically. This year, Wednesday, November 26th. So during the months of December and January, the superintendent and I reviewed budget requests and created the
budget. The finance committee and board are kept addressing significant increases in health insurance and other items that will affect the upcoming budget. We met with finance committee finance and facilities three times during the month
of February and March to keep updated and make adjustments and changes and recommendations in the process. So the board will approve the tens of budget today March 16. After the approval I'll send the budget to the
county office before March 27th. They'll review the budget and we will have the final budget hearing on April 27th for vote. So our budget priorities continue to uh first support our district vision. So
our district vision is to create a culture of innovation, inquiry, and individuality that promotes achievement and choice by cultivating the skills needed to compete and collaborate as ethical and responsible global citizens.
Second, to support the district mission statement. The mission of the Pasc Valley Regional High School District is to prepare our students for a successful college and or career experiences with the needed mindset, skills, structures,
and knowledge to accomplish that goal. Some curricular proposals for the upcoming school year are a new course in AP microeconomics, implementation of new required state curriculum standards, supplemental supplemental programs for
ELLL learners and professional development for advanced placement and other programs. Some other proposals included in our budget are expanding use of Gemini AI in the classroom, addition of new clubs
between both schools, and the purchase of a school bus to help meet transportation needs and over the course of time reduce transportation costs. So, staffing considerations for the 2026 2027 budget, we will be adding two
part-time PAR professionals. conditions are budgeted to meet special education requirements. We're also reducing positions. Two instructional positions and six support staff positions will be reduced in this
upcoming budget. We also have the discontinuation of region two which we have updated the board on prior. Uh this discontinuation will actually result in a reduction in administrative costs for our district.
Um but it will also um result in our staff absorbing some of those responsibilities associated with providing transportation and other services to our students. We've also decided to discontin use of
the insight health program. This is a health and wellness program that we used for one year. We're in the middle of the first year now. And after review of cost benefits um and usage of the program, we decided that this was something that we
would not move forward with in the upcoming budget year. So capital project we always try to include something in our upcoming budget. um the project um after consideration of speaking with our director of facilities and capital
improvements, he assesses the needs of the buildings and our projects in our long-term uh long range facilities plan. And the project that was determined to be necessary at the moment would be the replacement of the lecture hall rooftop
unit at high school. We'll be using a capital reserved withdrawal to fun this project in the upcoming budget year. This slide shows our total sources of revenue for the 2026 2027 budget. You'll
see that 86% of our budget is made up of the local tax levy, including our debt service. That's approximately 62.7 million. We're also using withdrawals from our
capital maint $2 million. Again, that's to fund the rooftop project using capital. Maintenance projects will be um performed using the maintenance reserve and we'll be uh using the emergency
reserve for some security upgrades in buildings. Fund balance is $2.6 million. This is an allocation of prior year surplus for savings which we're allowed to use in this upcoming budget year.
We also have tuition revenue of $686,000. Tuition revenue is generated from students from out of district special education program. We have miscellaneous revenue.
The majority of this revenue is generated um from interest on our bank account and we also have some other smaller miscellaneous items like budget. Federal and state aid of just over $4
million are included in budget. This includes our um the federal grants would be IDA and PSA. We use typically for tuition for special education students and ESA funds are used for professional
development and other smaller needs. State aid includes our annual state aid allocation, extraordinary aid that were budgeted in the program as well as allocations for nonpublic
funds. Um this is as you may know holds the public funds for St. Joe's Regional and it's our responsibility to work with St. Joe's and help them spend those funds. The St. Joe's portion has no
effect on our operating budget. This slide shows our total summary of budget appropriations for the upcoming year by category. You'll see that over $36 million are allocated to salaries, employee benefits,
uh just under $12.5 million services at $6.8 million tuition, which is what we pay to send students to out of district programs, $5.1 million. transportation needs. This would be to
and from school as well as athletic and co-curricular transportation at 3.6 million. Supplies and textbooks. This would include instructional and non-instructional supplies as well as textbooks for our instructional programs
at $1.5 million. utilities, electric, gas, and water at 1.38 $1.3 million, excuse me. Some other appropriations are about $758,000.
Included here would be some professional development and construction costs as well as students and membership fees. Capital outlay includes the capital reserve withdrawal that we have spoken
about and as well as some other um budgeted items for equipment purchases. Debt service is the amount that we pay every year on the bond principal interest of the prior referendum
funding. And we have federal and state grants. federal and state grants are um as we spoke about earlier, ESCA and our nonpublic allocations. Um and we budget those funds.
It's basically revenue expenditure for whatever we are allocated in the upcoming year. This just is a visual. You can see how much of our budget goes to salary and benefits. approximately 67% this year.
And then you have services at 8.9%, tuition at 7.2%, transportation at just over 5% and the other smaller items. So our 2026 budget general fund tax levy
is 60,631,000. This is a tax levy% increase of 5.3%. We are allowed to go over the 2 the 2.0% increase due to the allowance of the healthcare adjustment. This adjustment is calculated by the
state based on the increase in health insurance premiums for the state health benefits plan. As you can see, our district received almost $1.9 million healthcare adjustment in the current year, which brings us to that 5.3%
increase. So, contributing factors to the budget increases for this upcoming year are the healthcare and over $2 million of increase over last year. Operation and maintenance. This would be to do some
critical maintenance work in the buildings and also athletics who would see an increase due to um cost of supplies and uniforms as well as rental fees for the
facilities we rent service. So why is there a difference among the seven districts in the amount of taxes needed to support the regional budget? The formula for tax sharing among the sending district is strictly governed by New Jersey education law. The board of
education has no taxing authority. The tax formula is based on taxable property wealth student. The calculation is performed each year by the state to arrive at the municipalities tax levy. It's 12% share.
Total tax living for the upcoming budget year is 62,79,000. As you can see, the municipalities have their allocated percent share and the corresponding percentage of dollar amount of taxes. Hillsdale at just over
23% share has just under 14.5 million tax levy. Male at just over 28% with 17.6 million. Riverdale just over 26% share at 16.3
million and Woodliff Lake at 22.7% share with 44.2 million. Overall, when you include the debt service in the total tax levy calculation, the overall increase is
5.1%. This slide shows the tax impact for 2026 based on the average assessed home in each town. The average home information comes from the tax assessors in each municipality.
You'll see that for Hillale, the estimated annual increase is just over $236 or a monthly increase of $19.79. Fortale the average assessed home at $561,000
has an annual increase of $412 and a monthly increase of just over $34. For Riverdale, the estimated dollar increase is just over $24 and the increase per month is $1927.
And would late this year has an estimated annual decrease of $58 and the decrease per month is $42.36. This slide shows the fluctuations in percent share and how it affects the
annual increase or decrease for each of the towns. This is an eightyear history showing the fluations. Does the board have any questions? >> Do you have a breakdown of the percentage tax
percentages adjustment? those percentages broken down >> the percentage for the increase on the health insurance >> uh for the overall tax increase >> I can find something for you >> are we using it bank account >> no bank account
>> so and we're going to 2% >> correct yes we're over the 2% >> and then the balance is healthare >> correct so the healthcare adjustment allows us to go above the 2% to the 5.3
Um, was the reason we needed Insight Health to have a psychiatrist on the crosis and the discontinuation of that? Sounds like our guidance counselor staff is sufficient. Is that what I
s >> Yeah, I'll take that. Um so inside health uh was brought in um LA um was technically brought in this year. Um we use it for students who have a
greater therapeutic needs. Um so years past that has been handled in house. Um part of bringing um inside health in was also to use them uh for a portion of their time at Park Academy. So without having Park Academy here that
some of its cost. Um we're looking to then u go back to what we did in the years past of have um our counselors, our wellness counselors or perhaps our child study team members um
meet those students who need a greater therapeutic needs. Um I know one of the benefits we had for bringing them in was to get when we had to send students out for evaluation, they did a quicker turn. what we've had in the past, but it's something I have to work on going into
next year. >> So when residents look at this, obviously every year they're going to see a much more significant increase than any other town just for I guess theirformational purposes, how much was
cut from the budget like review on the slide you had positions that you add up versus what was added in what's that number >> if I'm understanding your question
correctly so our initial budget with all requests when we did a very initial compilation of the requests um there was $3.5 million that needed
reduced in the original budget. So the staffing reductions coupled with the health insurance adjustment allow us to get to a balanced budget. >> So I guess my question is the requests are in addition to the previous year's
budget. >> Would you like me to provide a list of the specifics of the increases that caused the Okay. Thanks. Our next presentation is regarding school ranking and our
superintendent and Mark Riso the director of curriculum instruction assessment will be presenting that. All right. Thank you, Mr. Phillips and the board of education for the opportunity to speak this evening about a couple of important issues. I recognize there's a longer
meeting, so I appreciate your patience as we do have some important topics to discuss. At Pascat Valley and Pasc Hills, we're committed to supporting our students, staff, and families. And part of that commitment requires that we utilize a datadriven approach to inform our
practices. Tonight, we'll discuss two sources of data, school rankings and chronic absenteeism numbers, and discuss how we're using this information to strive for continual improvement. One of the more recognizable school rankings organizations is US News and
World Report. And while they might be most famous for their college rankings, they also rank high schools. In the most recent edition of its rankings, Pasc Hills came in at number 59 in the state of New Jersey and Pascal Valley landed at number 61.
In order to understand what these rankings are saying and what they aren't, I'd like to provide a bit of context, then discuss how we are processing and responding to these data. First, it's important to note that these lists include selective, magnet, and
charter schools, which utilize competitive admissions to enroll high performing students in uh across entire counties or cities. Consequently, when these specialized schools occupy the top spots, it can mathematically shift the
relative placement of high achieving comprehensive school districts like ours. Roughly half of the schools ranked higher than higher than Hills and PV fall into this category. Second, the data that fed this most recent set of rankings as as Miss Keller
mentioned earlier came from 2022 2023 and only that year's senior class. So these rankings had a significant lag and they do not represent the full breadth of student performance even from three years ago. As we move forward in the presentation, I would just like to note
Mr. Phelps and I collaborated on this conversation. You'll notice my slides are very dreary with a lot of numbers on them and Mr. Phelps brighter and more entertaining. So, I apologize. Thank you for showing up. Okay. Um, third, uh, it's important to look at the US News
and World Report methodology. So, here row one and two are called college readiness and college curriculum breath and they account for 40% of the rankings. Please note that US News is exclusively using AP exams, not AP
classes or any other metric on college readiness for these two categories. Rows three and four focus on students performance on state assessments and account for 50%. We report out on these results every year and this is an important but not singular focus for our
teachers in tested subjects to make sure that students are well prepared. Row five, which accounts for 10% is a graduation rate, which is also something that we report out on every year. In this slide, we see the scorecard for
Pasc Valley and Pasc Hills. In order to better understand these numbers and put them in context, we compared our performance with our regional high school district peers, the two Northern Valley schools, Northern Highlands, Riverdale, Westwood, the two Ramapo Indian Hills school districts or
schools, as well as several additional peels uh peers, Ridgewood, Ramsey, Parkridge, and Nawa. This information is publicly available, so you're welcome to look through this information at your leisure. Uh but for convenience, I'll summarize how we stack up against these other nine schools. I'd like to start
with rows three through five. I will touch on all of them. But starting with rows 3 through 5, mathematics and reading proficiency are right in line with our peers, particularly after our additional emphasis these past several years. As we know though, these numbers
can fluctuate from year to year. Regarding science, you may recall that unlike math and ELA, which test grade level standards, the science test requires students to synthesize knowledge to solve complex multi-dimensional engineering and
phenomenabbased problems. Our science results, though lower than math and ELA, are also in line with our peers and reflect lower proficiency rates both statewide and regionally. Please note again that report we report on these
three items every fall and also that these numbers reflect NJSLA exams which is not what's happening tomorrow and they are not a graduation requirement and they lack an obvious incentive for students. Looking at the bottom row next
graduation rates are only worth 10% but you'll notice that they are lower than what we report to the board in the fall. The reason for this is that these numbers count fouryear graduation rates and do not take into consideration our students who are doing quite well but
qualify and are entitled to our 18 to 21 year old program. These students according to US News and World Report count as non-graduates even though this designation is both unreasonable and unfair. All districts fa uh face this
same unfair reporting challenge. But as a district that prides itself on our special programs, this impacts us in a meaningful way. And when scores differ by ten of a point, this can be impactful. Finally, and most pertinently to this discussion is our AP participation and
performance, which is shown in rows one and two. After careful analysis, these data stood out, especially when compared with our peers and deserve additional explanation and understanding. To situate this discussion, I'd like to
review slides from the fall board presentation. Here you will see our PASC bills results from the past five years. Please note that these data include all students and not just seniors.
Here you will see our Pasak Valley results from the past 5 years as well. There was a little bit of a blip after COVID with AP exams became becoming significantly more accessible. But with that exception in 2021,
um I would argue that students performance has remained strong or improved. Uh and the number of students taking an AP exam has either increased at Hills or stayed strong at PB. So then what is going on? I will point to two
things that stand out. Maybe not in their own right, but at least in comparison to our peers. The first one is the number of AP courses we offer. And the second is the number of students who take AP courses or AP exams.
I didn't get to that one, so I'm going to go here next. Great. Thank you. On this slide, you'll see that we offer 27 AP courses. This list compels compares well to our regional peers, but there are some courses that we do not offer
that many or some of our regional peers do. The three most common are computer science principles, psychology, and microeconomics. Why don't we offer these three at the moment? Computer science principles is an introductory course, and we made the
decision several years ago to instead offer a mobile app development course with the hope of appealing to a larger group of students. At the same time, we used our limited resources to also offer an advanced topics course to appeal to our strongest programmers who had
already taken AP computer science A. The second one was psychology. Regarding psychology, we decided to offer a dual enrollment course with Ramico for honor psychology and this partnership has been quite successful so far. Our course is more of an applied psychology course and
we currently have 154 seniors enrolled which is more than a third of our total seniors. The third course is is microeconomics um and this has already been discussed. Our intention is to offer microeconomics in the book. In each of these cases, we take into
consideration course content, student interest, and diversity of course offerings with the goal of providing the best learning experiences for a diverse student population. Part of this commitment to meaningful learning experiences involves offering explicit college level experiences. And while AP
courses partially serve this goal, even though they're the only indicator used by US News and World Report, we have also he um invested heavily in dual enrollment offerings. So this table is more expansive and more
fully captures our college level experiences we have available for students. In addition to our 27 AP courses, we offer 24 separate dual enrollment courses for a total of 51. we have spread out our resources more broadly and when taken together a large
majority of our students will take one or more of these courses. I apologize in advance for this next slide but I think it's important to show here we go. Okay. Um for those of you that are not familiar with AP and dual enrollment um I apologize I'll give a brief explanation. AP courses culminate in an
exam and colleges have different criteria for the types of scores they will accept either for credit or for placement. Dual enrollment courses, on the other hand, confer actual college credit where students receive a transcript from a partner university. We currently have
partnerships with the following colleges and universities. Satan Hall, Kain, Syracuse, University of Texas at Austin, Ramapo, and William Patterson. You'll notice in this slide, which was compiled by our supervisor counseling, Dr. Seanis
some information about local and regional or national colleges and universities that our students tend to apply to. Regarding AP exams, all schools on this list award placement, but the Ivy League schools do not award
credit. Regarding dual enrollment, all schools except MIT and the Ivy's accept dual enrollment credits. Returning to the year in question for the class of 2023. I apolog uh when we expand our under our
understanding of college level experiences to include dual enrollment opportunities as well. You can see that a large majority of the senior class took at least one AP or dual enrollment course. You can see that in the last column. Unfortunately, this is not
captured by the US News and World Report rankings. The question remains though, especially when compared with our peers, why aren't more students taking AP courses in AP exams? There are several reasons that I will propose. Um, first, we offer students an impressive amount
of choice. And some choose to take AP courses, some choose to take many AP courses, and some choose some of the alternatives, including dual enrollment options. To this point, we have embraced these choices and have not advocated for one type of college level experience
over another. For students that do take AP courses, we have made sitting for the exam optional. We highly encourage students to sit for the exam and the vast majority of students do, but some do not as can be seen in this table.
Finally, as was mentioned before, we have made some strategic decisions about which courses to offer and when to offer alternatives. AV offerings are an important subset of the choices we provide to students, but we like to think we have many other courses that
are also valuable for our students. In practice, then for students who are on the cusps or may want a college level course but have reservations, some may choose to take an AP course but not an exam or they may choose to take a dual
enrollment course or courses instead. >> I'll stop talking. >> How does this impact our US News and World Report rankings? Our numbers in rows one and two are lower than they would be if we placed a heavier emphasis
on AP courses and sitting for AP exams in particular above their alternatives. Encouragingly, our students who do take AP exams tend to pass. You'll notice that the percentage of students who pass at least one AP exam is very close to
the percentage of students that took at least one AP exam. Again, if you want to, you know, spend some time over the weekend looking through these numbers, if you compare these numbers to our peers, many of our peers have higher
took at least one AP exam numbers, but a larger and in some cases significantly larger difference between the percentage of students who took and the percentage of students who passed. It appears that students are mostly self- selecting.
Well, those that choose to take exams uh tend to pass. To summarize, we've made a decision to balance our investment in college courses between AP and dual enrollment courses while also investing scarce resources in internships, special
programs, and our elective departments, including the visual and performing arts, family and computer science, consumer sciences, business, and tech ed. We're constantly evaluating our course offerings and enrollment patterns and just in the past several months, we've had several conversations about
increasing these offerings for students. These conversations led to the decision to offer AP Micro in the fall and to each of our supervisors currently exploring additional partnerships with our current university partners or with new college or university partners about
increasing our number of dual enrollment offerings. Um, at this point now I've taken up way too much time. I'll turn it over to Mr. to speak a bit about his view on our course offerings, our course process, and how we should attend to rankings more generally.
>> Mark gave me 45 seconds. Um, so rankings were brought up in the fall at our retreat and at that time I I said um I'm a big fan of schools and I think Mark has just given all the data why I'm
not a big fan and something that we need to be careful as a school district. Um, we've made decisions as far as course offerings to offer courses that we think are intriguing and challenging to our
students and they and to allow our students to get college credits as opposed to looking at a ranking system and saying, "Wow, this ranking system really values AP. we need to turn the corner and just offer AP or or put our
focus on AP exams. I think when when we uh and when you start cha what I call chasing rankings, you're going down a rabbit hole. Um ranking systems consistently change. they they're upgraded and as soon as you make that
well there maybe uh times where you're making that change to raise your rankings and then a year or two later they change your criteria and you're back at analyzing and again chasing that rankings and changing your methods or what you're offering in order
to try to gain that higher rank. Um, so I I said in the fall it's important that the district determines what's important to them and that's what our focus should be in. It's obvious that this district for a number of years has put a a focus
and a priority on dual enrollment classes. Um, and that's why we're seeing a high uh percentage of our students enrolled in dual enrollment classes. Um, when you compare that at the state level, it's significantly higher. Um I believe we're somewhere around 74% of
our students are taking a dual enrollment classes where the state average is 23%. Um I know those numbers because we have to report them out to uh to the school to the state and that's reported out on a school performance uh report. So that's
an example of if we ended up changing our focus that another report could come out saying well we're now going to include dual enrollment uh perhaps as part of our college u career and readiness scores.
So I I caution the district as I always would uh not to chase rankings but to put uh value in what you're doing or what you want to do and follow uh
those goals. Um I think when we have something like this is brought to our attention, yes, we're going to analyze and we're going to look at it and and we're going to say u how can this information serve our students better? uh and how can we continue to meet the needs the diverse needs of our students?
Uh and and I think we're doing a good job at that. Um is there an opportunity for us to have additional offerings? Yes, we're going to we're looking at our courses and say um we're offering AP macroeconomics. Why aren't we offering the microeconomics? We're looking at our
psychology class, which is uh a very popular AP exam, and saying, uh, are our students who are doing the dual moment course prepared to take that AP exam? That might be an option where they're not taking the AP course, but they're taking an AP exam. Uh so uh we're going
to continue to move forward working with our teachers, listening to our students, working with our administration, working with our board on the uh curriculum committee um to analyze this and determine the best way to uh move forward. But as I said, it's it's it is a rabbit
hole if you start chasing um rankings. You can look at four or five different ranking systems and they all have different factors um that that contribute to their scores. >> Thank you. >> Uh before we transition to talking about
chronic absentism, any questions? >> So I know a few years ago was when um taking the AP test became um was it became not mandatory. So, not chasing the rankings or anything,
but have you noticed like a dip in the rankings since that has happened since like we've made it um not mandatory? >> Yes. So, I have not been able to establish that link um from that
decision to a change in rankings and the rankings fluctuate from year to year. uh I believe PV increased this year over last year. So there is movement depending on the individual cohort of students. Um and again this cohort is
you know graduated three years ago. So I have not been able to identify that but that's certainly something that's worth looking at and I can take a closer look at. >> Is there a number that would concern you if you have an AP course and a certain percentage are not the AP
exam. >> Yes. >> Okay. So, you have that >> we strongly encourage our students to take the AP exam and in most cases the vast majority of students do. Um if a situation like that arose that would be
something we would have to think about. 12:00 actually. So, um, just to put into context the dual environment part of everything as, uh, my child is in college now and I I think I didn't fully appreciate in what I I talked about the
other day, um, how much more involvement like how important that is just because when you looked at her AP classes and the AP classes she was taking, some of the colleges were like, "Oh, that's great that you know, you took the AP
class or you that like you know we you still have to take this class or whatever it doesn't like transferable but like dual enrollment seemed to be just so much more I don't want to say important but it mattered to the colleges more and I
just found that to be such an interesting eye opening thing because then my daughter told she said to me hey listen you know like there are kids who took dual dual enrollment and they have like a couple classes behind below their belt already or kind of in their belt already. And I just thought
that was really interesting as a parent to have to see that. So now my perspective on what my son is going to take next year like as a senior is a little bit more different in the sense of like what can you take, you know, that's going to give you dual
enrollment. So I just found that like super interesting. But a question I don't know that you have the answer to would be Do colleges look differently at dual enrollment? Are they like, "Yeah, you're not spending your money with us?" So,
you know, do they look at it that way or not really? >> So, it's a it's a great question. When we um communicate with students and families about dual enrollment, we're clear about what it is and what it isn't. It is credits from whatever the partner university is. So, ultimately,
it's up to the receiving institution whether or not they would accept those credits or not. just the very small sampling of schools I showed before. A few of the colleges did not take the dual enrollment credits even though they would be credits at University of Texas or William Patterson or Ramapo or one of
those schools. Similarly to to AP exam results, some schools will take them and some schools don't. What we're trying to do is appeal to as broad a group of students as possible. And we hope we can support the students who want to take a
lot of APs and students that want to take some and take some dual enrollment and students that want to take preculinary classes. And we want to try and support all of those students as best we can. And to this point, and again, we're constantly evaluating and trying to improve. Um but this is the
balance that we found um that makes the most instructional and curricular sense for us. >> What was the what was the decision made no longer to require students specific? What drove that decision process?
>> Who made the recommendation and what that decision? Um, so there were I wasn't in the seat at that time, but there was a conversation about student choice. There was a conversation about student wellness um and the additional pressures
that can be felt by students uh taking AP exams. Those are the conversations that I remember um happening at that time. Yeah, I I remember I was on the the committee for it and um
it was a matter of okay, so if we require them to take the AP exam, what if there are students who are like, well, I don't know if I can really pass this exam. I'm just not going to take the class at all whatsoever. Um so the hope was that it would encourage
students without this extra pressure that they have to take the exam. Um but that they would still be prepared to take the exam. I don't I don't know obviously the numbers of mistakes, who doesn't that sort of thing, but that was
what was the reasoning behind it to make it not mandatory. >> I do remember that. >> Yeah, I remember that conversation really well. >> I do too. Does the data does the data support that >> decision making?
um the data in terms of can you say a little bit more >> in terms of encouraging more students to take AP courses without >> stress of having to >> yeah it's hard to separate what variables are causing what uh generally
I think there has been an overall increase in the number of exams the number of classes and students taking uh AP courses but I don't know if that's due to the policy several years ago. >> But does that say fewer students are taking
>> uh so this is Pascad Valley this has remained fairly consistent. Um the number of uh exams has gone up. Uh and then at Hills there's generally been an it's not a large increase but there's been an increase in students um
particularly if you allow 2021 to be a little bit of an average student. So values remain mostly steady. Hills has generally increased. >> But with that said, we also need to realize we had enrollment at the same time. So we're seeing more students
taking all the pass. >> Yeah. I remember having that conversation where we were allowing we wanted students encouraging them to take the take the higher level courses without the requirement to take the
exam. But I guess um the concern that I think was um brought up and I spoke with um Mr. Phillips about it more recently is the AP the AP exams um you're required to uh pay for them um pretty
early on. So, at the time you sign up for the course, you know, some students might not be ready to take that test or may they think that, hey, you know what? I don't think I'm going to take this test and then they miss the deadline to take the test. And then while they go through the course, they might decide,
hey, you know what? I think I want to take it now and I might be ready to take this test. They've already missed the deadline. So, I think that's something to consider as well um in in looking while we're looking into this um some more. Yeah, and I just I put this up just to
give you a sense on from the class of 2023 again the number of students who took one or more AP exam and then the number of students percentage of students who took one or more AP again just the class of 2023. >> Any other question
last question? Um, so with did I hear you say that dual enrollment, they can take a dual enrollment course, not be in the AP class, but take the AP exam. >> So students can sign up for AP exams even if they're not taking an AP course
or in some cases if we don't offer that AP course. So that's what Mr. Phillips mentioned regarding a course where students might have the preparation. Um, so just as a a an example that's coming up, there's a new cyber security AP course next year. Some of our advanced computer science students get some work
in uh cyber security. So we're trying to look once we get the information at the course outline to try and get a sense as to whether those students could take the cyber security AP exam even though next year we're not offering an AP cyber security course.
>> Thank you. >> Last question. Do you remember what motivated the conversation four or five years ago about just the requirement of it come from students? Did it come from supervisors? Did it come from principles? I would be speculating. I'm really
sorry. I'm not sure. >> I can't speculate. I thought it was student wellness, but I don't I don't know that for sure. And I don't know where that came from. >> Where would it come from? He named all but one other parents.
If we were looking to make change if we were looking to make changes to our requirements, usually those concerns are brought up by uh parents and students. Um and once hearing those concerns, we do our investigation to see
see uh if it's accurate um and what we can do if we need to act on that. Um I have a child who graduated in 2025 and all AP credits were taken except from her college. And then um my son who
graduated in 2024 basically all of them taken so they they can like not skip a semester but they could take the next classes just saying that the system can't work. And then my only other comment is Saddle River Day School. They're building a
high school, a private high school. So that ranking, would that go into this ranking um that you're looking at? >> Uh not a private high school, but a public high school would. So when we look at them up in Bergen County,
they're in the ranges. Um most most counties havemies that are part of the range. So if you if as um my previous district I'd look at the the top 20 schools I would say
probably 12 to 15 million more what we call admission only schools and I'll I'll give you my child's experience who was graduating class of 2025
none of his AP courses were accepted by this college so Every college is unique. Every college is unique. >> If it's outside your major, >> it's in your major. >> Can I transition to chronic?
>> Yes, please. >> So, this is an example of one of Mr. Phillips nice to see slides >> part of our disciple Gemini AI >> and this is back to one of my slides. Uh so now we'll transition to another important discussion I believe a shorter
discussion on chronic absenteeism. So as you can see from this slide there is a technical definition of chronic absenteeism. It's a student missing 10% or more of school days for any reason other than a
small list of excused absences, which includes religious observance, take your child to workday, and up to three college visits for juniors or seniors. Notably, this list of excused absences does not include sickness, even with a
doctor's note. Again, students might be excused from class, but a doctor's note does not excuse an absence for state reporting purposes. And that's what we're talking about here. Chronic absenteeism for state reporting purposes. Um, again, class absence
different for school absence. If a student is present for less than half of the instructional day, they are marked absent for the day, even if they attend some of their classes. On this slide, you will see our chronic
absentee numbers for 2024 2025. You'll notice these numbers are too high. In order to get a better understanding of what's happening, we did another deep data dive, administered a parent survey, held school-based
meetings, and made recommendations in a district-based meeting with Mr. Phillips. So I'm going to highlight some of the information that was gathered from the uh parent survey which was completed uh in midFebruary. So we wanted to get an
idea of how many days our students are basically absent up to that point. Um any number that's appearing in the blue or red that they're they're on track. They're in a good zone right now. Um if we're looking at 10% of absences 180 days school, we're looking at students
who approach 18 absences uh are going to be chronic considered chronically absent. So at the halfway point, we're looking at students who are at six to nine absences, which is a little above 15%. And those students who are falling into that green um piece of the pie
there, they're really in danger of if they haven't already hit the chronic absence number. Can I ask a question about this data? >> Yes. >> Um, I know that they used to do like if a kid was like running into class 30 seconds late, they you did that x amount
of times, I think it was five, it counts as an absence from that class. Um, is that still being calculated into this absent? Like they're in class, they're just there like literally 30 seconds late. >> So student absence and school day absences are are totally different. Um,
so as long as they're half the day, you know, >> they're fine. >> What's also interesting about this survey is we got we received 108 responses, which is a lot for a parent survey. So I'm very happy about that.
Um so when we look at uh the top three reasons for absences according to the parents health and uh illness which makes sense 87% said their child was absent one or more days because of that. I I was a little surprised by the second response is family vacation. Um so we
had 16% of our population said that their child was absent one or more days because they vacation. And then the last is mental health or emotional stress. uh anything beyond that was less than 10%. Um you know what I'd encourage families
uh I certainly if you're planning a family vacation we do have breaks but also please take a look at your child's performance their grades their credits um before making finalizing those plans. Um if attendance or grades are an issue try to schedule around the school
calendar. Uh and I I thought this is a very important question because we want to make sure our students are coming to school um and are comfortable here. So uh overwhelmingly it's it's stating that school students do feel safe at school.
They are engaged at school. Um for the most part they are comfortable uh asking for help and at this age are motivated to come to school. Um what's a little concerning to me a little bit is um the set of third bars. We do have a little
higher uh percentage of students that are being reported out that are not so comfortable asking for help. And I think that's part of our job is to uh teach some more self- advocate skills to our students so when they are struggling or having difficulties uh they know how and
who to reach out to. Uh as far as some insights from the survey um some general insight when we asked them about uh does your child have a particular time or day that there's trouble getting to school 18% of the parents said yeah there is not
surprisingly Mondays and mornings are are a problem as I see our two student reps shaking their heads and laughing. Um what's nice about the schedule that we run though um the the rotate and drop uh that period one class is changing so
you're not missing the same class if you're having troubles getting here in the morning. Um so that that's beneficial to those students. Um and some some support that they would like to see in place. The top three responses were flexible scheduling options uh
which we do offer as part of our rotating job and past that period. give some flexibility. Uh we can start looking though at maybe at our course offerings and what we can do. Um perhaps a little more bit more hydra uh hybrid approach if that's allowed at this uh
within this state um rules um academic tutoring and cover uh credit recovery. I I think that's just uh we're offering that in many ways in our schools whether it's it's through centers, whether it's through it's through uh peer tutoring. Uh, I think
just perhaps the students uh just need to get that messaging better. We have to get approved of what how we're getting that out to the students and transportation assistance. Um, I think that would probably a little bit more difficult for us to accomplish. Uh, we do offer busing for those students or
beyond uh I believe it's a two- mile radius. Um, uh, they did mention the long lines coming in in the morning for those parent drop offs. Uh so that's uh always a challenge. Um but uh we're
looking at their feedback. We're taking it in and we're figuring out the best ways we can move forward. Um >> yeah. So we're back to Mark's slide. Uh but with that said, I'll let Mark finish up. Uh what's again what's nice
is some things have brought were brought to our attention. we're taking a deep dive into it and figuring out ways that how can we improve our service to our our parents and to our students. Um, and there's been some great ideas are are uh
evolving from that. Um, and it's making sure that we're um including the entire school community. It's not coming just from administration. Uh, this has to be a message coming from the administration, the teachers, and from home.
They really are embarrassing looking slides when compared to this. Uh so just a few more data analysis points. Uh and then just to summarize uh so some other points that were interesting from the data analysis of the students who were chronically um absentee in both buildings at Hills 52% of them were
seniors uh and at valley 43% of them were seniors. So this is a primarily senior challenge. Um, so in addition to that, more than 20% of our students with disabilities in both buildings were chronically absent. Um, we had some
subgroups at Pasc Hills are black or African-American students, Hispanic students, and students who are economically dis disadvantaged. They were more likely to be chronically absentee. Um, and of the total chronic absentee students, 32% at PV and 37% at
Hills were only one or two above the cutoff. Now, that's still too high, but they were close to not even registering as chronically absentee. Um, so just to summarize, um, our reporting procedures to this point have been accurate for class attendance, but we were over
reporting daily absences to the state. Uh, we met with our legal team and we've adjusted these procedures effective immediately. We expect this adjustment will make a significant difference in next year's chronic absentee numbers. Uh we discussed several measures uh including positive acknowledgement
meetings and phone calls for students who begin to accumulate absences early in the school year, automated communication, home visits and group communication with families and collaboration among teachers um families uh and administrators. Chronic
absenteeism is a very real concern for us and this concern has only been elevated since co. Our expectation though is that with our updated reporting methods and supports and the support of our families that we will be able to make progress at reducing this
number with the ultimate goal of getting students in class as much as possible. Does anybody have any questions? >> You said you were over reporting. Um can you explain that? >> Yes. So there was an older uh I don't know how you would describe it as a a
best practice. >> Well, I think the state >> So the state definition at one point was that students needed to be present for uh four out of six hours and one and so that would mean one in the morning and one in the afternoon. But that guidance
has been updated and we checked and it is now at least half of the instructional time. So if a student came at 10:15, we would mark them absent for the day and that was we will not do that moving forward for state reporting purposes.
>> Mr. >> Yeah, we have a breakdown of students who are members of clubs or sports or other activities and they're absent. >> Yeah, that's an excellent question. >> They'll get there. They're not eligible
to compete if they're Well, I bet >> just a question uh regarding the attendance reporting. We I was there would get frequent emails through Genesis. Um and then I would call the school and like no no don't worry about
it. It's fine. It's just for one class because she's at the wellness center or she was with her so it was more casting that doesn't really count. So I think kind of that miscommunication gets some parents all some parents will care. I mean but there are parents that do care
and I feel like if it's a little bit I don't know those automatic generated things I think are giving a lot of misinformation and I really would prefer something more personalized if somebody's in danger of not getting credit for a course or
having this chronic absent. >> Thank you for that feedback. I also think there's um a lot of confusion about the difference between class attendance, which is what we stress, and state reported chronic absentes. They're they're different things, and I don't know that everyone knows or wants to
know that distinction. >> Just a quick quote. Um, is this seem to be um occurring all over the state? Is this something that um we you're reporting on because of the state level? It's an increased issue within this
state and that's why they started reporting it out. Um I'm going probably say right before co a few years a couple years before co they were seeing increase against problems. Um,
and you know, there's a little bit of gameplay. I I know the student was going to be out. If you had unique situations where a student might be um I I had two students who brothers who were going to play for Trinidad uh um junior world,
they were going to be out a month. So those situations so they wouldn't be comparably absent. you withdraw from school for that month and when they come back you reenroll. So, you know, a lot of districts start taking look at their
practices as far as um dealing with students who have long-term absences for unique reasons. Um but it's it's this problem is not unique to this district. >> Thank you.
>> Sorry. Over here. Um so there's a clear distinction between well there number three on our list for chronic absenteeism reasons was a social emotional piece and presumably even number one where there are health related issues that have been
essentially caused by some of the social emotional issues. Um, I know that you have to answer this now. As a district, we're focused on we're obviously assessing a need, see the need, and we're going to address the need, but and this can be in our curriculum and
instruction meetings on Wednesday, guys. um how can or what can we do as a board to support the the social emotional needs of the students particularly when we're cutting programs that are meant to support
students with social emotional needs. So how are we mitigating that problem as a board and as a district? Thank you. I'm going to add something, elaborate something that Dr. Russo said. I met
with my son's college guidance counselor who's been there for four years and I was asking him, has you seen a trend, any changes in 40 years? It's a long time. He's like, "The biggest change is co." When CO hit, it changed somehow the
mentality of the kids. They don't show even show up for guidance counseling meetings. He had nine meetings that day scheduled. Only four showed up in person and they're like on campus and he's on campus. So this is something as a ramification of a repercussion of co
Sorry, I did have one more question I was curious about. Um so based on the demographics that we discovered uh had more absenteeism issues, what were their responses? I mean, I'm definitely dialed into the social emotional piece, guys.
Um, so I'm curious to know how they were affected or are affected and their absenteeism is affected based on their support or lack of potentially social emotional programs. >> Okay. Yeah.
>> The demographic information we have is based on absences, not within that set. >> Okay. >> But what we are doing um when we have students approach um that chronic level, we are having
meetings um individual meetings with them and discussing situations to find out the reasons behind it and how we can help their attendance. >> And if I could add that just briefly, Mr. Phillips uh invited us uh and Mr. Weer I believe expressed interest in
having the climate teams come and give a presentation about the school climate survey once that data is ready to be presented there. We do have demographic information and that will definitely be part of our conversation in that upcoming any so attendance is covered in the
climate survey >> attendance is questions about culture and climate or demographic information is covered. So um to the point that was made about uh student wellbeing if we wanted to get information from students about their
attendance I would think something that would be one way to gather that information is that something you consider what committee I guess >> yeah so the climate survey uh finished
Sunday night um We every other year we um we have been asking for some qualitative feedback from students in the fall uh and analyzing that data to balance the quantitative results we get from survey.
So that is certainly something that we could incorporate in that conversation short of administering. >> I think it would be really beneficial to do that. But I also think that adding adding that to the survey. Sorry, you
were gonna go. >> I'll finish it. >> I forgot what I was going to say. >> Sorry, what were you saying, Mike? >> I forgot that I was going to say, but no. Um, >> so 16% I think of parents indicated vacations for for a reason.
>> Do we look at patterns in the school year of attendance? Like for example, I'm just thinking of the school calendar seems like feels like it starts a little bit earlier every year. So do we see patterns of students missing the beginning of the school year because they're not done with their summer yet?
That's just one example. >> That hasn't come up in our district meetings yet, but we can certainly bring it up in our next meeting. Um as far as looking at certain time periods of the school year increase attendance issues.
Um what's what's nice um is that we do have students who are very active and involved and that they tend to you know be around more frequently even during breaks because you know as you know if you're in athletics
you're you're missing you're missing some breaks. So, one thing that came up actually with with with parents um was, you know, things that happened throughout the course of a school day that might prompt a student not to attend school that day. Um this is
actually something that I experienced as a parent. Um you know, we had dinner last week and students have a number of substitutes in classes and you know, I experienced it. I had other parents asking me, you know, my child had 50% of their teachers who were not here that
day. Um kids just deciding I'm not I'm not going to go to school today. So you know what happens throughout the course of the day in terms of schedules and I know we talked previously about the schedule and where pass period falls and and you know I don't know if we ever had
that followup presentation maybe it happened in curriculum instruction but when we changed the schedule over three four years ago um I think the motivation was for students to be able to take more elective classes if I'm not mistaken and
so I guess the question is, has that happened and is is the way that the schedule was reconstructed um has that or could that have impacted attendance based on on where kids periods are falling and what their day looks like?
>> A lot of good questions. Um you know, my short time here, I I've been um starting conversations about instructional time and classroom time. Um and um in the back of my mind, will be having a student survey by the end of the year to
discuss um not just absence from school but um when they are in school and they're absent from class for a variety of reasons such as villages or um having to leave early for athletics or whatever else calls me I think we need to take a
little deeper dive in those situations. >> Yeah, I remember so I love Mr. Rever's idea of having the students include their absenteeism in their climate survey, but I definitely think it's important that
they list the reasons. And when the the parents chose the reasons for their absences, was it from a bank or was it >> was it opened? >> It was from a bank and it was pretty extensive. >> Okay. >> Okay. Yeah. I'm going to follow up on
that. Where was religion? It's not up there. >> Yeah. >> Um because I I only put the top three. Um >> Okay. >> Anything beyond that that there like I said it was less than 10%. So there wasn't a huge number of parents identifying that
as a reason. >> But religion or or state if it's on the list. >> Correct. So they don't factor into the >> if it's on the list. So on this uh and I don't know if it was
on this parent. I can't remember off the top of my head, but this was this wasn't necessarily about excuse absence question. And then can you go back to the previous slide that had the barraph? That one right there. The strongly agree
or the strongly disagree and disagree seems to see I mean there aren't numbers or percentages attached to it but you see disability strongly disagree to my child engaging if my child feels comfortable
asking for help and my child is self motivated to go to school I never want to see anything there hope to have those columns look a little bit more like the first where it's
minimal but yeah when you look at that it's it's not a curve One more question. I'm so sorry. And thank you. The staff, how is the staff assessed on their culture and climate?
And perhaps if if we're talking more so about how many substitute teachers are in the classroom? Um are there any teachers that are chronically absent? Is that affecting the students at school? >> So um there were a couple things there.
We the faculty and staff are also given an opportunity to do the school funding survey. Um we monitor faculty and staff attendance and I would say that yes we want we want teachers in front of students and when
they're not in front of students as much as you know that that's something that we look at. um its relationship to school culture and climate though uh it's not asked about on school climate survey. It's also one of those things that would be separate
information that we would have to ask a different question. Um and the fact that the survey is optional and anonymous makes that tricky. Other questions? >> We've taken a lot of your time. I appreciate uh the good questions and
discussion. Thank you so much. >> This was a great discussion. Thank you so much. >> Okay, we're going to move on to agenda item seven, comments from the public. Citizens are invited to make comments regarding agenda items limited to three
minutes according to the Capital Valley Regional Municipal District Board designation policy number 0167. Persons wishing to speak must being recognized, rise, sign in, state their name, town or resident, and which agenda
item they're referencing. >> Absolutely. Our students are permitted to come forward. So excited to see them. >> Wow. Who do we have here tonight? >> Hello. As as you well know, when you see
me come in in the middle of a meeting, it's it's theater season. So, we have our spring music with the Adams family. And so, this is Caitlyn who's playing Wednesday. We just finished a run through. I was like watching the time ticket. I was like, I hope the meeting's still happening so I could stop by. And
it was perfect timing. So, I really hope to see you all there. It runs next weekend, March 19th through the 22nd. And we have a half student pit, so you know, come see our students perform both musically on stage and backstage coming from the person that does sound at the
way back. So, I really hope to see you all there. It's going to be a really, really amazing show considering I just watched it for the 14,000th time. Um, but I really hope to see you all there. You should have gotten a code for the ticket in your email and so I highly
recommend using see it. >> Thank you. >> That's all I have. Thank you, >> Kaitlin. I did not recognize you. >> You're way too smiley to be >> I guess I'll just have to see this Thursday. You start this Thursday.
>> Thursday, not this Thursday. >> Break away. >> Thank you. So, I want to say that I heard you all rehearsing when I walked in for the meeting and I couldn't help but open the door and sneak a peek and >> it looks and sounds awesome. >> It's not quiet.
>> Very exciting to >> Thank you. >> Are there any other comments from the public regarding any agenda items? >> I think I'm just going to email. >> Okay, see if there's >> Oh, sorry.
I have something that say about the NJPA testing for >> um like few of my classmates and like myself kind of like want to like express like a little problem with your GPA like system and how like at the same time like personally for me and so my friend
we have physics we're missing a few times and the other class it has the teacher like in the afternoon a little bit behind us testing and everything our teacher voice like it's a little bit frustrating that he can't teach us
especially because we're in like a big part of our next unit um and like we're bored time basically because like our test is a day obviously um and also I take a class with seniors for math like people are accelerated in math um and because it's a senior class our teacher
doesn't make any exceptions for us and we are also losing time in that class um so that's I found that some people that aren't in junior only in the morning just having a struggling point of time to pick up that class. Um, just like bring that to your attention. >> I'm very glad you brought that up. My
daughter actually mentioned something about it. Um, so I'm actually really glad you brought that up. >> I'm sure. >> Yeah, I I think what we were looking at is that we have three4ers of the student body not attending school because one
grade is tested. So when we look at the good of the whole that was a decision that we we move forward with. We understood that there would be some adjustment. Um typically when we have um state testing happening and we're only
having the testing gray come you guys wouldn't be meeting for those you guys have very limited periods in the after like do you guys run it because I wasn't here last year. Um, do you run a all eight period for those testing days
that was starting? >> Yeah. Um, all days this week are all eight days. So, we're missing the same period. >> But I'm saying prior to this year, what occurred? >> We ran the rotation. So, we came kids
came in late but the rotation dates were wrong. >> Correct. Why is it a day every day though? I can't and Monday classes >> because we're running whole periods. We're still running the the schedule. So, we did they they're not doing a team job. >> But to their point, do they keep missing the same class every day?
>> They they would have they would have be they wouldn't be missing the same morning classes because um those juniors are testing so they're not proceeding. So if you're in a a mixed class with a junior, they're not receiving the material they class,
>> but they are with the after classes. >> Well, they're keeping same pace. So if you had um uh let's see, you had a um calculus in the morning, a calculus class in the morning, and the teacher had a calculus class in the afternoon. They like to
keep them on the same pace. So, um they're not going to be if the if the calculus class is not moving on with the material because they're not uh they're not meeting in the morning. The afternoon class is delving more into the topics and that they're not introducing new topics.
But I definitely think that some classes are experiencing that. But for the classes like my teacher said like we can't stop like we're already behind and like he has to teach our whole new topic and basically this whole weekend like class is missing
it. Um I don't I'm not saying like it has to change next year. Like I definitely think the teachers didn't know and my teachers like having a hard time figuring out like oh what am I going to do for your guys? I think just like earlier notice or maybe they didn't know but just like I don't know expect the notice like a little bit more so that they can have like lesson plans
ready for us like online because it's just going to be a bit of a struggle like catch up. >> I I I typically what happens when we're doing a new u procedure right um that there's bumps along the way and we're going to learn from them. Um I'll go
back to what I originally said when we look at the good of the whole there when I think it was difficult for us to understand if we had the the ability to bring in threequarters of school instead of keeping them home during testing. Uh
that's and and educate them there. That's what we wanted to do. >> I don't know that it's just the it's just the keeping them home part. It's the just having that same schedule of a week. I think that's more of the concern, I think. So, that's a good point. Thank you for
bringing that up. >> Okay. Um, are there any other comments from the public? >> I have a question, but I don't know if it pertains to today's topic, so I'm not sure what the rules are. >> Sure. >> Do I go? >> Oh, is it on an agenda item?
>> I'm not sure if it would be considered an agenda item. So I don't I don't know. >> If you don't mind just bring it up at the end of the the next comment. Yeah. Comment from the public. Thank you. >> Um okay, moving on to agenda item eight.
Um regarding policy um consent agent agenda items. Um and I please have a motion. Second. >> Any discussion? Okay. Um, yes. >> Miss, yes.
>> Mrs. Wong, >> yes. >> Miss Kelly, >> yes. >> Mrs. Martin, >> yes. >> Mr. Sen, >> yes. >> Mrs. Ves, >> yes. >> Mr. Weaver. >> Uh, no. Three. Yes.
Miss. >> Yes. Moving on to education. Um item agenda item number nine. Um there are three items um here.
Can I motion? >> Yes. Yes. >> Mrs. W. >> Yes. >> Miss Keller, >> yes. >> Mrs. Martin, >> yes. >> Mr. Sus, >> yes. >> Mrs. >> Yes. >> Mr. Weaper. >> Yes.
>> M. >> Yes. Moving on to um human resources. Um there are 23 consent agenda items. There's a
supplemental on this one. Um that we all have. >> Do we get a chance to make comments on >> Excuse me. Yes. Thank you. Uh discussion. >> So, I have a question on athletic appointments. Uh DM just said I was
going to bring it up. I don't know if you saw it or not. So, when I was looking at the the appointments, I'm looking at baseball for get killed and I'm seeing one, two, three, four, five assistant coaches being appointed and sharing
statements like four people are sharing one site and one person is getting 10% of another. I have to ask the question of two questions. Number one, is that the intent of the contract? Is the intent of
the contract to have people shadow um one position to the extent that this position is being shared and then number two is like is it equitable? We've got softball who looks like
they're sharing one position and like from the sounds of it, we've got seven or eight coaches for the baseball team. And how many coaches do we have for the softball team? And then is what's happening at Pasak Hills for the baseball team, the same thing that's
happening at Pasak Valley for the baseball team? And who's making that decision? Like when we advertise a position, is it are we advertising the position? And who's deciding on on whether or not it gets shared and and how it gets shared? Is it the people who
are applying for it? Is it the coach? Is it the athletic director? Is it the principal? Um so first and foremost, my concern is the the equity piece. Um and I know I've shared this with with Mr. Phillips just with regard to the
volunteer coaches as well. Jim, I mentioned something to you just about policy committee like how do we go about advertising for volunteers? You know, we look at some teams, you look at some benches, you might have
five, six volunteers in a program and you know, the the sister or brother sport might not have any and the school at the other or the program at the other school might not have as many as the other school. So, it's like not only with our assistant coaches and how we're
going about um awarding site, but how are we going about recruiting volunteers in a way that's equitable for all activities, not just sports um and between both schools. So, for that reason, I can't vote on this tonight in
terms of a yes or no. I'm going to abstain on it. Um and I think it needs a real hard look going forward. I understand the season has started. Um, but I would hope it is something that we can review uh perhaps in in the
personnel committee. So I'll be abstaining on 13 and thank you. >> Okay. Um is there any information on how that is decided? >> What is decided
>> like how many coaches we know that sales have more players? I mean >> no no the the number of coaching positions hasn't changed who was in the contract. Um there are a number of of teams that will take an assistant coach
position. Um and maybe they had two interested parties and they decided to split the position. Uh in this case there were several individuals I guess who who are willing but could only help out on certain days. Um those
individuals are not going to be the five or six coaches that are approved will not uh be attending at all practices because they have other commitments on other days whatever they may be. Um, so, uh, as far as the the approval process or who
decides that, usually it's up to the head coach, it will present it to the athletic director who then will submit um to HR to me and on the board agenda >> because I know that they used to have at Valley three baseball coaches
essentially, one for freshman, one for JB, one for varsity. Um, I know that there were some volunteers, whatever. And in softball, I don't think they had a freshman team. So there was only a JV and a varsity. So is that part of the difference is that there's not as many
athletes in the softball or is it something? So the number of um student participants in a program or look at that and determine if if another coach is needed or not. Um sometimes uh we're have budget issues maybe that we're not we
wouldn't be able to add a coach even if the numbers dictated it. Um, but from my understanding that hasn't happened to this point. Um, typically I think they want to see uh a program sustain a certain number for a couple years prior to hiring an
additional position. >> So I I guess I'm concerned that we're hiring people who are like fully committed like so we're bringing in coaches then who are there maybe Monday, maybe Thursday. Wouldn't we want people
who are fully committed to the positions? I would think that that's in the best interest of of the student in whatever activity that they're playing and why we wouldn't be seeking out full-time people rather than trying to peace meal part-time positions together,
which I got to be honest in my experiences when I go to games and I see activities I see multiple adults either on a bench or on a field. Um, you said everybody decides to show up for game day. Practices are optional,
but um I I don't want to appoint people who are I mean in the contract they're full-time positions. I don't understand why we're not appointing full-time people to those positions and if there's interest out there in people
who would be willing to accept a full-time position. I don't I I guess I don't understand that logic. I I think there's a variety of reasons. Sometimes there are not people and there's only people willing to commit to a portion of it. Um I think
sometimes it's it's the head coach's desire to have multiple people perhaps uh and and maybe they're willing um to be there full-time, but we can only pay them partial. So, we're getting a combination of of paying someone a portion of the siphon, but still getting
them to more or less volunteer the rest of their time. But then, how is that equitable to the baseball team at Valley and the softball team at Hills? It just isn't. Yeah,
that's a difficult question to answer. Um, you're looking situations where if we want to start limiting all our split positions, there's a a lot of impact that's going to have. Um,
you know, if the situation is and we see this sometimes where uh we can't find someone to commit every day. So, we're we're able to split that. But if we're going to now say we're not splitting positions, maybe then we end up not filling that position. Those are the things that we
have to take into consideration. Um I I think there's also um you know when you can get quality volunteers or quality coaches can come in x amount of days during the week. Um
is there a benefit to the program and to the students when they have that instruction even if it might be only two or three days a week? >> Now all the assistant coaches are under the head coach as as far as chain of command. >> Correct.
>> Everything >> correct. >> So everything follows through. They're all They all have the same training. >> Correct. They all have to take this same um mandatory testing, background check, etc.
>> And uh a lot of times it's based on enrollment of students in the sport. our paid positions would be not necessarily having volunteers go do it. >> Just to be clear, we're not violating the contract. >> No.
>> By doing this? >> No. >> No. But there is an equity piece. I mean, if you're telling me that there six assistants for one sport at one school and the same sport, the other school only has three assistants
and the softball team only has two. I mean, we we talked equity a lot about around the table. That bothers me more than the contractual piece. So, I guess one thing I would be curious to know out of this is what are these people's time commitments? >> Are they full-time people being paid a
partial salary? How many days a week are they practices? Are they attending all the games? Um because again, I look at this and softball gets short changed. You know, we've had this conversation around the table between boys sports and girls sports, and we haven't seen a
climate survey around this table in four years by no fault of anyone around this table, but we've got to get back to having that conversation. And this kind of jumped off the page of so I don't want to labor. It's been a long meeting. >> Okay. Um
>> well hold on we did discussion >> yes >> Mrs. Long. >> Yes. >> Miss Keller. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Martin. >> Yes. >> Mr. Sus. >> Yes. >> Mrs.
Yes, >> Mr. Beaver. >> 13. Yes. To everything else. >> 15. Yes. Everything else. >> Um, moving on to finance. There are 28
consent agenda items. I have a motion, please. >> Any discussion? Thank you, Cindy. Thank you, Cynthia. Okay. There's no discussion. Um,
please. >> Yes. >> Yes. Mr. Kelly, >> yes. >> Mrs. Martin, >> yes. >> Mr. Sen, >> yes. >> Mrs. Bis, >> yes. >> Mr. Bieber, >> yes.
>> Yes. Agenda item 12, old business. Okay, moving on to new business. Any new business? Seeing as there is none um moving on to comments from the public. Citizens are invited to make comments are limited to
three minutes according to topic valley school district of ed policy number 0167. Personally speak recognized rise sign in state their name and residence. Where do I
podium? Just the button on the mic. Okay. >> Hi, my name is Stephie Portway and I'm a resident of Oakliff Lake. Uh my daughter I went to middle school but one who attends Hills. And I guess I have a question comment. I'm not exactly sure
kind of exactly what it is, but my daughter's part for the robotics team and I know this applies to robotics, but also to DEPA um in terms of their competitions like their world or their international competitions where the students have to fly to the competitions to attend. Um it's been mentioned at
least in the robotics team that they're not allowed to purchase tickets in advance when they're very reasonable, like in the fall or early winter, that they have to wait until they're confirmed to be attending. um the event in order to purchase tickets for the team. And tickets tend to become, you
know, double, triple, sometimes quadruple the price they could have been if they were purchased earlier in the year. And becomes a financial hardship for a lot of the families to be able to allow their children to go because not only are they paying for the flights, but also the hotels. Um and the kids work so hard to get to these
competitions and they're so excited. And for some of the events like DEA or robotics where the students, you know, we typically, I think, have an idea of how many kids are going to be going if they qualify and the activities tend to qualify year after year. And I don't know if this applies to sports as well.
I'm not in that world, but I'm guessing it might. Um, I'm just wondering if the school would change their policy to allow these organizations and these teams to purchase the tickets earlier in the year so that it's more affordable for students to be able to attend them.
Has there been any discussion on that in the past? >> I'll let Cindy talk about purchasing laws. >> So, we are aware of the issue. Um, we are required to work within New Jersey
state purchasing laws and our district policies and our purchasing manual. Um, I know I have worked with the robotics team on making adjustments so that in understanding their concerns to figure out a better way going forward to address these
concerns and allow the students to um basically I'm trying to figure out ways to make sure that if there is a way for the students to be able to purchase those tickets in advance to try to reduce those costs. >> Okay, you're welcome.
>> Thank you. Would it be something as simple as just adding trip protection like it at like a, you know, steeply, you know, discounted rate and then would it be cheaper to just add that option? I'm wondering.
>> So, the student activities are usually funed those are funded by the students and the students would collect those funds and they go on separate account from our district fund. So, that's one of the things we're we're looking as what what are we allowed to
do to try to make the costs more? >> So, just in terms of timelines, because I don't know. Um, and I think it's a great question. So, is is the time of the trip the same time every year and like when do they find out when it's
going to be? Then, I guess then it's contingent on board approval. So like if we know the trip is going to be in April over the summertime, then should we be approving it over the summer time so that they can then buy tickets? >> Yeah. So the catch is that they qualify
and I think the timing of the competitions differs a little bit each year, but they're like a period. I know this year the district um competition, which is what they qualify for worlds at, it's less than two weeks before. So if you wait until they qualify it gives
like a week and a half to buy tickets which they get very steep and they tend to qualify every year and if they don't qualify any tickets that were purchased can usually be um been transferred I think I don't know it's all the rules but from my understanding from what the coaches have mentioned they can be
transferred to a school that does qualify because the school would love to buy them at a discounted rate if they haven't been allowed to purchase versus having to purchase them at the current rate when it's so close to the competition. So, that's what I've been told. Obviously, I don't know all the um
details and rules about how it works, but that's been mentioned at the >> buy them early and tell your kid they better qualify. >> They do qualify. So, >> thank you. Thank you for bringing that to our attention.
Um, any other comments from the public? Okay. Um, motion to enter into executive session. >> Second. >> Oh, there will be no action taken. Um, so we will be concluding directly after
or adjourning. um after that session closes. Thank you. This concludes our um public