##VIDEO ID:a_iQTryVAB8## e e e e good evening and welcome to the pasak Valley Regional High School District Board of Education meeting this November 18th 2024 during this meeting two opportunities are provided for citizens to make comments persons wishing to speak must upon being recognized rise and state their name and town of residence uh and it comment shall be limited to issues roll call please Mr youi Mrs vgis here miss Calderone here Mrs Wang here miss Keller here Mr lis Mrs Martin here Mr Stanis here miss stephin here Mr Weaver here please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance iedge Ali to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one na under God indivisible and jce adequate notice of this meeting has been provided by mailing copies of said notice to the record filing copies of said notice with the municipal Clerks of Hillsdale Montvale Rivervale and woodcliffe lake and Publishing said notice in the record on August 26 2024 we'll start off with routine matters and our monthly reports and first we'll have Dr bot for the superintendent report e all right uh thank you so I have a a little bit of an Abridged version from last month and this month to kind of combine them together to keep it um relatively brief so some of the things uh will be from the start of school and some of them will be a little bit more recent but just a few things that I wanted to update um the board and the public on and just make mention of a couple of of things that we had going on that I thought were cool and exceptional that I wanted to bring to everyone's attention so uh the first thing I want to talk about is I am thrilled to announce that our district has satisfied at least 80% of the weighted indicators in each of the five areas and has been designated as high performing uh for qac which is exciting um this includes one of the highest curriculum and instruction scores Statewide and only one loss Point elsewhere uh this score affirms the great work that we see from our teachers and from our admin teams um and I was really excited to see this and show this we were waiting for the commissioner to affirm the score before we reported it out he still has not affirmed the score um so I you know I did want to kind of announce this because I've seen uh people talking about it and they're already starting on the second round of qac for this year for new districts so I didn't want to kind of leave it behind when the commissioner affirms that high performing designation to us um I'll make sure that I send something out to the board about that but I was very pleased to see this not surprised um we spent uh probably a solid maybe 8 to 10 hour day with curriculum and instruction uh and I think that effort really paid off because that's an amazing score and I don't think we lost any points outside of the points that the state gives you for testing so um that's in like unheard of and incredible and that's a testament to our supervisors and to Dr bachenheimer and and uh everyone who works out of our curriculum office to really make sure that all of our um elements were just you know exactly what um the state wanted to see with those indicators which was great I want to give a quick report on school boards I include this picture because it was fun I had the honor of being part of the opening ceremonies this year for our um School Board Workshop we had a uh nice contingency um Stephanie is going to speak about her experiences there in a moment but I wanted to actually share one of the thoughts I had was that a lot of times um we are asked to present at these National or state conferences and I often don't share back to all of you what we've talked about and I thought it might be kind of cool to share that back we had um in the audience we had some of the um members of the school boards in our lower districts were there and that's actually what made me think about this because they were saying afterwards I was speaking with them and they said you know it was really cool to hear from you all of the things that we're doing at pasac that we didn't really necessarily know about because these are more like kind of curricular angles or or um you know more on the back end of instruction and I thought it'd be kind of cool to share that out so I'm going to give just a very kind of brief overview of what we talked about um I was on a panel called the future skills panel it was set up by Apple for education um with uh New Jersey school boards there were superintendents from um uh a number of frankly much larger school districts so we had uh the superintendent from Lyndon U one of the assistant superintendents in Trenton superintendent of planfield um talking about how uh technology basically is reshaping teaching and learning throughout our districts and so what I talked about was uh how at pasak Valley Regional we're really proud to cultivate a culture of innovation and inquiry where students are empowered to take ownership of their Learning Journey we believe in preparing students not just for college but for the ever evolving landscape of future careers and this commitment is reflected in our onetoone technology initiatives I spoke about how our early Innovations with onetoone being among the first districts in the nation to implement this practice has really paved the way for us to continue with the culture of innovation with our staff uh I talked about how we prioritize student voice and engagement we encourage our students to be active in student government and in various decision-making processes I think what's unique about our approach is that this culture of innovation and individuality really allows students to personalize their academic experience while our teachers are empowered to really Embrace diverse instructional Styles and explore new pedagogical approaches which is something that doesn't happen in most school districts and it's something that happens here almost so naturally that I had to really think about how to explain how and why that happens um and so I kind of just talked about how um we really tried to uh create curriculum that's designed to be adaptable and responsive to the changing needs of our students and that we have a long history of empowering our staff to try new things um I kind of joked because we have an internal term for it we call uh we call some of these pilots and these innovations that we do like pockets of awesome where staff can pilot or try instructional methods they can try assessment practice IES they can apply for Grants um for example the wind power grant that one of our health science teachers received last year and how um we have physics teachers that Embrace gradeless standards-based assessment systems and how our supervisors really act as supportive mentors they guide teachers to ensure that there's benchmarks to maintain consistency and Pace but also help them adapt Innovative practices to best serve our students um I gave one of the examples I gave was our going grade list teachers that you know we only have really two teachers that have fully embraced the idea of Standards based instruction in The Sciences but what ends up happening is people see them and learn from them and then take elements of that success and bring it into their own classrooms one of the questions that one of the superintendent said to me is like well what happens with like a teacher that doesn't have a pocket of awesome and I was like no that's the thing like every single teacher has something awesome that they're doing that's Innovative and different that they can share with their colleagues um and that's I think the piece that is overlooked even I think sometimes by our own staff um but it's true and it happens and it's just such a cool part of our culture that's so ingrained but is so I think integral to our continued success um so I had fun kind of bragging about that uh to uh to the audience but also why I wanted to say kind of to all of you that that's one of the things that I talked about because I think it's a it's a real uh point of Pride for us and it's something that um is very unique I think to pasak um I also talked about how um you know we are really trying to stay flexible and forward thinking and that uh one of the reasons that we do this is to make sure that we're preparing our students to thrive in a flexible and uh need to be adaptive environment once they leave here um so really thinking about how are we setting up our students for the best success that we can um which is fun it's fun to talk about I joke a lot about how I could talk about our cool stuff forever and I could um and I cut out like three paragraphs that I was going to read to all of you because I could really talk about this forever but I did want to just share sort of like what it was that I shared on this panel because I thought it was cool and I think it's something to be celebrated that we have staff that are doing these Innovative things that other people want to hear about um which I love I'm going to throw this slide over to Stephanie she's going to talk a little bit about um her experience as a board member attending the workshop conference because um while I was obviously honored to be on a panel there's hundreds of workshops going going on at the same time and they had about a half dozen uh Keynotes that they um had that you could attend as well so Stephanie I'll throw it over at to you um so the photo on the left I think I shared that um he's one of the John konz he's one of the key speakers and this is my first time at New Jersey school board convention it was really educational like when we need to learn these things you got to go to these places to learn um so John konz the reason I want to bring this up is he is a TV um host of what would you do and he has made 1,200 episodes in the last 17 years that's just a fun fact and he recommends a book um by David Brooks called how to know a person the art of seeing others deeply and being deeply seen I got the book it's very good um and the purpose of the show and the reason I'm bringing it up is he's recommending it to all of us us volunteers us board members us Administration to to to read this and to be in inspired by this because his show what would you do is really to find where the moral Integrity of a person begins he believes that we are taught to be active bystandard or taught to hate so it's just interesting and he T he his parents taught him that he could be more um and encourage and he was encouraged to um go into education I mean through education he could be a anchor person um another session that I went to was on promoting social emotional learning and the speaker um she's been teaching this for 13 years and because we're interested in that I wanted to learn more about it um she starts off the lecture that each student is like a shaken up soda can so when they arrive at school they could potentially explode and so what do kids feel and what can we do about their challenges and what do students need and the SE the social emotional learning core skills that were presented um maybe it's too much okay um theal core skills are were presented as four concentric circles and the center one is where the student learns the skills the self-awareness self-management responsible decision- making uh relationship skills and social awareness the next one is classroom and then the outer next layer is schoolwide practices and the outermost Rim is family coaches in community um she recommended further information on the castle website and she had two studies um for us to look up for more metrics and I have those um I also went to the Future skills in future technology but I won't talk about that and um the last two that I'm just going to bring up is I went on a another session on plural istic education and that's learning from not just the dactic teacher I guess and it's just different ways the theme is from and you can look this up on YouTube it's very interesting um the person who is speaking is rudine Sims Bishop on this theme of Windows mirrors and sliding glass doors and the windows well this she wasn't a speaker the three speakers highlighted this person and the window Windows is where students can see out and see their potential future the mirrors is where students can see reflections of themselves in books and what they read and the sliding glass doors is a place of interchange for what they read and experience through what they incorporate so they go in one way and they come out a different way that was interesting um and uh both all the speakers were from New Jersey NJ a New Jersey Education Association Consortium and they highlighted this which was really interesting and I and because it's mandated now to learn about I I don't know how do you describe that Asian culture Black History Month these kind of things um Title Nine which is the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs it was authored and sponsored by Patsy too mink she's a first Asian-American in Congress Asian-American um because she was denied entry into medical school um because of her sex she helped um remove barriers for women and girls in education and sports so she helped pass the women's education Equity act in 1974 so the 2024 paty mink quarter like the quarter 25 cents um is the 12th coin to be released in the US mints American women Quarters Program the reverse is mink holding the landmark Title 9 legislation I didn't know that cool so we'll look at the quarters when we get them um and the last one I attended was um um NJEA and Garden State Coalition it was six panelists and they talked about school funding Staffing teacher shortage mental health and it was really educational so I highly recommend going to the convention thank you Stephanie it's interesting that you pointed out the um windows and doors so they actually do a unit of that in the English classes I know they do it at Hills I assume they also do it at Valley um but I hadn't heard of that before and um one of our teachers uh actually talked about it at a conference um maybe two years ago and uh shared that they use it as one of the prompts to get kids to start thinking about this um I assume uh it's a teacher that teaches uh I think all seniors so it must be our senior level English at Hills I assume also at Valley um but I thought that was really cool and so it's really cool that you saw that mirrored at this National Conference or the state conference on adult leadership um you know this concept that we are also using when we're trying to talk about these skills with our students which is cool to see that's great thank you um talk a little bit about AI so brag a little bit uh we um helped uh promote a Statewide workshop on AI we had Noemi uh Rodriguez who is our world language supervisor who's currently um on uh sabatical this semester she was one of our presenters and um she was able to talk with other uh leaders throughout the state about um you know kind of an overview of AI how to help teachers uh learn a little bit more about Ai and then also looking at um what kind of current best practices are with AI very well received we also had U Miss Safari talking at a state conference on uh World Language instruction who's our current World Language supervisor uh using AI to teach uh World languages and then one of the things that we have been seeing that I think is uh very firming to our practices we've been focusing this year on making sure that our students understand how to appropriately prompt AI so we've really been talking about the input because it it takes a level of problem solving and a level of critical thinking to create an appropriate prompt for um you know AI to use if you don't put in a good prompt it's not going to give you a good output and so that's something that we've built into our media center classes this year for all grades um as you know uh uh Google uh expanded AI Gemini uh down to age 13 so our students do have access to Gemini right now um and so we want to make sure that we're good stewards of that uh technology and are working on making sure that they understand how to use it not only appropriately but in a way that will ultimately help them um now and in college and also um in the future the uh prompt on the left is from a workshop that our admin team went to down at at school board so um Miss babis who's here Miss Lee who's here um Dr hesny um uh went to uh a workshop where they were talking about prompt engineering and so like I said I'd like to see things that are kind of affirming like that's what we were that's path we've been on for this year that sort of been our Focus for what we're going to make sure that we help teach our kids um and so it was affirming to see that that was something that was being brought up at this conference as well um Miss babis did you want to talk about that at all we had talked about uh you making comments in October but I don't know if yeah oh maybe you're in a different okay yes yeah oh that's okay that's okay [Music] um let me see if that was everything I want to say about AI so we are doing a parent Workshop um we're partnering with uh The Parent Academy to put this on we have Amanda bicker staff who is from AI for Education she's one of the kind of early adopters of AI and education um doing a parent session for us it's going to be via Zoom um in uh January uh so we'll put out more about that but I wanted to just mention that that's something that we're looking at as well to kind of give an overview to parents how parents can help support their students using Ai and then also I asked her if she would also talk a little bit about how parents can use AI themselves um you know how how can that make parenting life a little bit easier so um we're going to be exploring that as we go we also have um Kyer learning uh which is a consultanting firm that we've used in some of the technology roll outs that we've done in the past well received by our staff they have um teacher practitioners who uh practitioner teachers who really understand how to use these Technologies in a classroom so we're rolling that out uh to train um all the staff who have signed up for it um in kind of AI how to use AI in classrooms and then we also asked them if they would do a second parent session um so they're going to do a second parent training session we haven't scheduled that yet but I anticipate that being maybe like February March and then see if there's interest from the parents in doing more and if so um Miss Lee offered to do a parent training session um and we have a couple couple of other staff members who said that they'd love to you know get in front of some parents and talk about this so expect to see a little bit more of that on the schedule and I think that's a great Next Step too we want to make sure that our parents are included in the conversation and that also when parents are helping students at home that they know what the expectation is for student use of AI um we think that that's uh you know important um this is small I understand that this is a list that I had sent to the board previously but it's just a sampling of all of the professional learning communities that we have running this year uh I wanted to shout this out because basically teachers are volunteering to run these various learning communities and we have such an amazingly wide range of topics we had our first PLC meeting actually the Monday morning of our last board meeting um and I wanted to give a little bit of a a shout out to the staff that we have that are helping to run this um and also to just share sort of what this looks like so our plc's they can run independently throughout the school year but they have some scheduled when we have an early I'm sorry a late start for students um we're either doing plcs we're doing a district meeting or we're doing department meetings during that time so when we have the plc's the feedback we've gotten from staff is that it's been really um meaningful for them to be able to participate in a topic of their choosing um but then also to be able to mix and interact with people that they maybe have not interacted with before because the groups are pretty jumbled um it's not like meeting you know all the history teachers are meeting together they're really mixed groups I did want want to share the PLC that I'm in this year is about mindfulness and um supporting teacher wellness and um I know we've had conversations and questions about secl and mindfulness and how you know where's that line between encouraging social emotional learning and uh there was a question before about you know is there the potential for that to negatively impact our students are we creating sort of uh you know things that are too personal is it appropriate for teachers to be talking about about this throughout the curriculum so I wanted to share um one of the things that we did in the PLC this morning um that morning I should say um it was about mindfulness and basically what we talked about was a quick grounding exercise that can help reduce anxiety and clear your mind and so we had a speaker um talk to the group and give some tips on how to set priorities and goals how to be more productive and then also how to do some of these grounding exercises yourself or with your students and so I wanted to give an example so that you can see that there are things that are actually um helpful and things that teachers can share with students in a way that's appropriate so the the 54321 method which you may have seen before because I've I've seen it before but basically it's you take a moment and she had us kind of all do it so if you guys want to kind of do it for a quick second it'll take like a minute um literally will take a minute so you you think really quickly in your head five things that you can see so just real quick you think like five things I can see you know blue tablecloth microphone laptop five things that you can see four things that you can touch so it makes you think about what are you touching so you know four things that you can touch three things that you can hear and this is where it gets very quiet when you do this with a group listen for a moment and then two things you can smell and one thing you can taste and you can kind of just get a very quick sense there of how it kind of um makes you think about the 5432 one things that you're looking at maybe not thinking about the test that you have next period maybe not thinking about you know all the other things going on in your life and just gives you a second to um be present um and breathe and so these are the kinds of things that you know we're often talking about when we're talking about mindfulness and we're not telling every teacher to do this the this is just one of the things that we shared but I wanted to share it with everybody because when we did this as a group of teachers um and we did it kind of quickly like I just did it right there but at the end you're kind of like okay I can I do feel a little bit more grounded I do feel like I can feel my breath a little bit so um I thought it was cool I think it's great I know the feedback we got from the staff that are in it is they were excited to share that quick exercise with um their departments and with their co-teachers so I think it's just you know starting this conversation thinking about how do we include um tidbits like this in ways that are appropriate and ways that can help our stud students and our staff um you know be as successful as they can be as as we kind of move on yeah of course yes please oh yeah oh wonderful oh yeah oh that's okay and that's something that we've been really looking at uh enforcing so especially over the last year U Miss Pinger and um um uh I think Ali is doing it down here have been really working on making sure that our the software system that we're using to support mtss so what are we using to support intervention and referral services um is meeting the needs of our teachers um we are currently doing a pilot with um linkit to house some of that data for our teachers and for um our administrators who are overseeing the m TSS process we recreated the mtss handbook that we're using and um we've done a number of um staff development on you know um Universal supports second tier supports third tier supports and since uh we have uh Miss babis and uh Dr hesny and Dr Vasquez on board we've also been talking about what other supports can we add in at tier three um that they've seen in the districts that they came from um to better support our students with mental health needs um if they need that higher level of support so it's been something that we've been really kind of doing a deep dive on um and so it was cool to see uh AI being paired with that and then also the fact that we're doing some plcs that uh work around that work has been helpful as well um I wanted to just share this and give a shout out to miss Safari and the the uh teaching team at PV so they have a team of uh a core team of maybe like six or seven staff that really put this together um they do a celebration of cultures event it's a whole day uh and uh this was on November 1st Hills does something very similar theirs is at the end of the school year but um this was a really cool event last year I think it quadrupled in capacity from last year to this year the gymnasium was packed students sign up to share um Traditions food food uh clothing cultures games um from a culture of their choosing so they can share something from a culture they identify with or a culture that they um might just have an interest in or love um there was so much food at this event uh so much more than last year there is uh sharing of dancing there's musical performances there were singers um there was um Opera there was traditional um song and dance there was contemporary there was similarly traditional dancing contemporary dancing um and then so much food so many games um we had uh students bring in dresses that they wore this year to their own um K Kera birthday celebrations I mean it was just so much fun the kids were really into it and it was so nice to see them celebrating each other's cultures um as well as um you know just learning about new things and we're going to have to think about how we're laying it out next year because the gymnasium was so packed um they're going to have to come up with a different setup because there were so many kids that wanted to share which was amazing um a huge shout out uh to miss Safari for overseeing that and then I mentioned this briefly at the last meeting but it's just too cute not to share uh Dr bachenheimer went into our preschool for fire prevention and fire safety month um and had the kids dress up uh he brought all of his fire gear in um and then he also had uh our preschool program is run with our teacher Deb program so we have high school students who have a course in child development uh those uh high school students are co-teachers in the classroom and they can be from 9th through 12th grade uh so our our high school student co- teers also uh put on some of the fire gear and help the kids understand what it looks like and feels like to be helped by our firemen um which is you know one of the goals that we have for preschool and kindergarten when it comes to fire safety we want to make sure that they know what a fireman looks like um because as you can see that doesn't it's not how do back usually looks so um that was really cool um I wanted to mention this very quickly so we did rededicate the Hills field um I was really honored to be able to meet U Mrs deala and her children um as we celebrated this rededication uh I learned that early in Hills history bartalo was instrumental in ensuring that Hills had robust athletic programs as principal he encouraged Athletics he coached teams he advocated for for funding he made sure that we had as many athletic teams as he could field um and then um uh with his support under his leadership is when we built the first real Athletic Complex for the school um the staff who worked with Mr deala shared their experiences working with him and talked about how he was so student driven and student focused um that he was just instrumental in building that culture of uh student focus at Hills that you can still see today so that was a really cool event um Mr whe and Mr Papa set that up uh to make sure that uh the rededication went off well and it was really nice to see his whole family and then finally I wanted to just share this and these pictures don't do this project justice so I took these pictures when was our last board meeting October I don't remember it's 28th so maybe I took these pictures October 15ish when you leave look at the sign because the um the plants in the back are covering the sign in the back that's how much they've grown the P plants in the front have completely filled in and are kind of draping over um but the zacary foundation with support from native Gardens which is uh run by uh John nerian who's a PV parent um uh put this in and and they did all the labor they did all of the um Landscaping they did all of the plants it's beautiful um there's a plaque um you know honoring the foundation and we do have a board resolution to thank them so I'll turn it over to Jenny to talk quickly about that board resolution so we're going to skip forward just a little bit and go to item number eight uh the resolution of appreciation for the Zachary Foundation native Gardens landscape services and Cletus Farms Nursery whereas pasak Valley High School has recently completed a front sign beautification project which included the construction of a decorative wall showcasing the school's original 1955 Cornerstone and whereas this project has greatly enhanced the school's appearance and has been made possible through the generous contributions of the Zach lary foundation for generously do donating the labor costs for the project native Gardens landscape services for providing their expert services at a discounted rate and Cletus Farms Nursery for their kind donation of beautiful Shrubbery now therefore be it resolved that the pasak Valley Regional High School District Board of Education expresses its sincere gratitude and appreciation to the Zach ler Foundation native Gardens landscape services and Cletus Farms Nursery for their generosity and support in making this beautification project a reality their contributions have significantly improved the Aesthetics of pasak Valley high school and created a welcoming environment for students staff and visitors beautiful thank you so that is the end of my report I want to just check quickly to see if our score rep yeah so our score rep is in the zoom waiting room do we want to skip the score and then come back sure yeah so that's uh one of the presentations in um in the agenda for yeah that's fine all right I'm gonna just keep this up here then hold on one second okay hi Keegan we uh we're gonna skip to you if you are ready yes scre I hold on I got to give you a I think I have to give you a permission okay awesome go ahead and great can everyone see this okay I just want to make sure because I can't awesome yeah you're good you're the video is just I know it's a little bit off the video is just on me let me actually before you start I'll just show you so have a meeting here evening everybody but I have it where you're kind of in the front here so I just see I think that's gonna be the best way to do it okay cool thank you awesome well thank you all for letting me join tonight's session this will not take long um hopefully I I meet the 10 15 minute requirement here but if there is questions as I'm going through please feel free to write anything down um I'm going to do my best to have Q&A at the end um but worst case I did include my email here if you do want to follow up or have any questions for me uh but thank you so much again for letting me join tonight my name is Keegan and I am the district's point of contact at score so any and all questions that ever come up about usage questions with uh working with students Sean and I are in constant communication so nice to meet all of you and again here is my email if you did want to reach out or follow up with anything so really quickly I outlined some points that I wanted to address with all of you tonight first one being just a quick usage overview with both high schools in the district and then after that some college search and list building points in terms of how students navigate this in scho and similarly career assessments and how students search for careers in score and then again if we have time for Q and at the end great if not I can follow up with Sean as well so again I wanted to just give you all some perspective into the action that goes on in terms of usage of score I started with hills just because of alphabetically and we're going to start just focusing on the 12th grade students so I wanted to include um some senior statistics here for your awareness uh 93% of their seniors are registered and using score which is great um and very close to that 92% of those students are following at least four colleges in score which is incredible so that means that they're interested in four colleges at the bare minimum and at this point in the year 67% of those seniors have applied to colleges which is awesome this early in the application season so that's great to see and parents and Guardians are involved 61% of them are registered and using score at pasak Hills I'm going to also shift over to 10th and 11th grade student usage here 90% of juniors are registered and active in using score that's great to see especially this early in the school year that's very rare um and then 71% of those students have at least one college preference indicated so they know what they want their college campuses to have for them which is awesome that they're this decisive as 11th graders uh and then 66% of their sophomores are are registered and 25% of those sophomores are following at least three colleges which again is really exciting to see and I also wanted to include in here that there are 173 three College visits that have happened at pasak Hills uh I think that that the district's been using score now for a year and some change so it's a lot of college visits at a high school so that's really exciting to see and then jumping over to Valley uh 94% of their 12th grade students are registered and using score 88% of those students are at are following at least four colleges which again great to see there 57% of those seniors have applied uh to college thus far again great to see and same sentiment here with parents and Guardians 68% of parents and Guardians are registered and using score so they're engaging their doing what their students are doing so that number is great to see and then I'm going to wrap up just looking at their 10th and 11th grade student usage in score 96% of their 11th graders are registered amazing uh and then 64% of those students have at least one college preference uh indicated which again great to see 87% of their 10th graders are registered which is again very rare with districts at at this point in the school year 21% of those students have or are following at least three colleges which again great to see that they're building those lists so early on similar here 180 College visits have happened thus far at pasac Valley so really cool stuff to see that there is a lot of Engagement year-over-year and all the way down to 10th graders at this point I also wanted to mention in here that we are going to be shifting our Focus um I'm touching Bas with both high schools and Sean pretty consistently but we will be shifting to um Target 10th grade students a little bit more going forward here just so that they are continuing to build their usage of score and making it easier for themselves and for both teams as they are guiding their students throughout High School um really quickly going to jump over here to list building and College searches and what this looks like in score so in score there's a lot of different ways that students can start their college search and start list building the first one being College preferences so as I mentioned earlier this is a really great way for students to be indicating what they want a college campus to have for them if they want to go in state out of state larger School smaller School uh trade schools fouryear 2-year anything like that students are able to tie into those College preferences and that can be updated as often as they would like it to be very similar sentiment here we have the college match quiz which allows students to be engaged take a really quick short quiz um which will then pull in their college preferences after they complete that college match quiz also in score we have college profiles which is how students are going to to search for colleges a college profile will contain all of the information that's available to students counselors parents and Guardians in score and then beyond the college preference search we also do have an advanced College search in score which is where students can indicate additional filters that are beyond their preferences if they wanted to see anything else or they're just curious about other factors that might play into their search and then the last Point here and I'll show this in another minute or two but we have a very intuitive drag and drop method for how students can build their lists and move forward or take colleges off of their lists in score counselors parents and Guardians can suggest colleges to students and then from there students can take action follow a college maybe even apply to a college um but this list building will be really exciting for students to use as they are evolving in their decisions when they're research in colleges before I show that though really quick wanted to take some snapshots of what these other items look like in score um so the college search quiz is going to look very similar to what I have listed here it's really interactive and gives students a chance to think about what they might want to study where they might want to go um so again in a little snapshot this is what the college search quiz looks like and then College preferences here's a little snapshot of one piece of that for students as well and then the advanced College search similar to preferences but goes a little bit deeper just to get students really thinking about what those search pieces can look like when they're researching colleges all right as I mentioned earlier I really really quickly want to share a snapshot of what this list Building looks like from a student account in score so let me stop sharing and I'm going to share my other screen here and just show really quickly what this looks like so for um additional visibility I am logged into score right now as a demo student and this is what students are going to see when they really start to build out their college lists in score um there's a number of different columns here but you might notice we have the suggested column listed here this is open to counselors parents and Guardians if they think a college might be a good fit for a student the student can then see the name of the individual that suggested that college or those colleges and then this is what I was referring to earlier let's say my student wants to think about applying to Boston University the student can then simply just drag and drop the college over to their following column if they want to put it in their quote interested column in score and then going forward let's say they really want to apply to any of these colleges same thing here they just keep dragging and dropping until they submit their application and this is how again they really move through that process in score and then students parents Guardians um other folks always have the ability to add colleges that are not already in their my colleges as well so if a student has an idea behind a college that they want to follow or they want to start their application to this is where they will build out the basis of that my colleges page and with this little bit of time I have really quickly the other thing that I want to show all of you just to give you some perspective is a college profile on score so this is that page that is going to include any and all information for students that is available to them parents and Guardians students and counselors will always have the full visibility into all of this information in score so this is going to list an overview um transportation where the college is located and then other factors like academics admission statistics cost in Aid and then last but not least Student Life let me go back to my presentation and then we'll wrap up in [Music] there Keegan on the screen that you were on before it had um reach and Target can you just talk about that just really quickly how they get those um how they get those classifications for the student yeah so reach and Target that's automated and pulled from iPads so that information is available uh by colleges we just automate it and score depending on a student's academic information uh counselors always have the ability to override any of those labels and how they're applied to a student but it is automated so that students have a better idea of if a college is a reach level a likely but as I said counselors can always reapply labels or update the language if they wanted to override that okay I don't know hold on one second I need to reshare another screen here I think okay perfect we're back okay moving forward and then I promise I am wrapping up I also wanted to talk about Assessments in score as these kind of lead to that career Conversation Piece um in score we have two assessments the first one is our career interest assessment this is 5 to 10 minutes it's a lot shorter than principles you and this can be retaken as often as a student wants to retake it um and after this is complete students will be matched with careers and be able to save careers based on uh their strengths once this assessment again is complete the other piece here is that counselors are able to track completion uh view students that have or haven't started this assessment and counselors can also view any saved careers after students have completed this first assessment the other assessment that we have available in score is principles U which is our character-based assessment and a little bit more in depth than our career interest assessment above principles U takes about 30 to 40 minutes so ideally about a class period for students to complete um the big thing though with principal U is that it is a one-time assessment so we do our best to encourage counselors to make this available to students 10th grade or 11th grade since again it's a little bit more heavy than the shortened assessment and then once principal view is completed uh parents and Guardians students and counselors will always be able to view a student's results their archetypes how they work in groups individually and their individual strengths will be listed as well just to give you all a quick snapshot this is the idea behind what principles you will look like for students um it's pretty straightforward it's quick but we do want students to set time aside to of course put some thought into their responses so that they're matched with careers that are really intentional behind the results of this assessment and then wrapping it up in terms of principles you this is an example of what some pages of the results will look like so students will see their archetype they'll see again how they work individually how they deal with conflict how they engage with groups of folks um so this gives students a good idea of what their strengths might be again in a more in-depth character-based assessment uh setting and then tying those assessments into the career search in score we allow students to use the results of both assessments to find best fit careers but students also do not need to take the assessments before they are matched with careers if students want to research careers in score before they take the assessments that is totally fine we encourage that so that they're just learning about what careers are out there for them and then let's say a student loves a career that they have researched in score they can save any careers that they want to to their profile counselors will always have visibility into those saved careers if they update they can delete a career in that section um and then the idea here is students will be able to view fields of study after they save careers to their profile in score to make sure that they're looking at colleges if that's the route they're going to go that have those Majors or fields of study associated with those careers okay I tried to do the spark notes version as best I could um I know I'm probably over time and I'm gonna send some resources to Sean as a followup um but are there any questions anything I can clarify uh just in terms of this content here Stephanie I have a question on our previous platform Naviance there was a page and I was hoping score had the similar page where since we only have score for the last year I was wondering do we have historical information so that if the students were interested in going to like let's say Lehi and they could see how many numbers of students got in there and which one was a reach you know the stars and the triangles does score have that oh yes so Keegan could you hear the question I heard like 75% of it I'll the next person that ask a question I'll walk to but I I think the question is and I I think it's um score is not using the data that was stored in navian to determine what's a reach and what's a Target you said that they're using I forgot what you said they're using are information available just just like to the public so that's all shared by the college however I did I feel like I heard something about scatter grams potentially or like that in a gra yeah so students can see both so students will be able to see any historical data from Naviance that was shared with us which I think there's some class years of alumni in there students can view scattergrams to get a better idea of the high school's historical data in addition to um the labels of reach far reach so they'll see both does that answer your question Stephanie okay do you have a second question go ahead do you want to come over I um yeah do you want to come here and say into the laptop all right so we're gonna do this differently Keegan okay this is Stephanie she's asking the question go ahead um on the last slide you on the last bullet it says was it this slide or was it is score only for colleges meaning if they have other careers does something else pop up that they can see different fields of study so we will link to trade schools as well if students have saved anything in that realm to their uh careers in score um in addition to any other career that might connect to fields of study for a four-year institution um so we're we're working with trade schools to have representation in this capacity as well um and then there's resources available there's other avenues students can take if they didn't want to pursue College necessarily um what I'm going to do too and I think I have it linked here we have a career Readiness curriculum that we recently released for counselors to have access to um so we have the college readiness curriculum and the career read career Readiness curriculum so that counselors can be working with students that are pursuing both options um but there is trade schools tied into this as well uh I have a question oh so uh you were talking about the Target and the reach schools uh on there so do kids have their GPA in there in that particular program like do is it does does it get inputed do they input it or because GPA is so much more important now that sat is optional for a lot of these colleges so to me like that's one of the most important things um as far as in you know where they're going to go to school and that sort of thing yeah absolutely and both I think both schools have it that they're bulk updating that information as often as the gpas are updating um students there's ways depending on the team that students can self-report their GPA but if they are not the teams are bulk uploading gpas throughout the school year so that that information is consistently updating with the student my understanding is that Genesis and score have an Interlink yes yes that so that yeah exactly hi um so and what about um SAT scores or ACT scores are they automatically inputed um PSAT scores all that stuff count that all counts um that is not automatically synced however it's the same idea counseling teams both of them separately will be updating that information those test scores as they're made available so the students entire history of test scores will be updated and show for the student and their supporters in score so that's all in there as well when a student links our high school to sat our counseling department gets that as like a digital like file that they can upload into score I think we upload that into link it as well if you wanted to if you wanted to you you you had mentioned the override so I'm just saying like if a student took a PSAT and it's really not refle Ive of you know or they don't want to use that score so is there a way to just have the counselor take that score out to see what it is just based on their DPA yeah there is a way um the terminology I forget how we have it worded but counselors are able to quote like manipulate a student's profile remove information so that they see you know their likelihood applied and if ever again counselors wanted to fully override with all of that information populated they could given the context of location um any other information that's taken into consideration when students might be applying to colleges from the district I just realized uh Dr stris actually was sending me things he's affirming that score has the Scatter Plots that Stephanie was looking at there is historical data from Naviance that's reflected in score and that the student GPA are uh continuous uploaded into score yeah yeah um the student has a list of colleges that they already approved with the counselor and then once that list is done then the counselor goes in and de puts in the scores that they want agreed upon and then that's what gets sent so it's not like just random it's agreed upon and Vincent that makes sense yeah and there's there's a way and score one other note here students can also indicate if they applied test optional to a college so the counselor is looped in there as well if the student didn't want their test scores to be sent with an application um the students will communicate that or the counselors can also input that for the student I do but Andrew Andrew uh hello this is our student rep Andrew um so back to what you were saying about targets and reaches how students can see if a specific college is a target reach or safety how accurate do you think that data is just because there are some times where students can see a specific college that they think that they have a high chance of getting into and sometimes it doesn't give them a result that they want so just how accurate do you think that data is that's a good question yeah it is a good question and this is also for everyone's awareness this feature was it's our most recent feature we did pilot it with 100 Schools um we're still working on refining it we we do ask for feedback if students or counselors feel like it's not realistic or overly ambitious with what we're sharing um but based on the information we've collected the information colleges are sharing with us everything that we're taking into consideration when we are applying those predictive matches is pretty accurate but if it ever feels like it's an outlier or it's anything is a a little bit off we want that feedback and we ask for it um we've been conducting meetings when the feedback is really not great just so that we're connecting the dots there um and we're I can't speak too much yet but we're working to refine it in an additional release so that it's close to fully accurate going forward um but more to come there and I will Loop in Sean and keep you all in the loop there too question I have one other question um as far as in calculating the GPA is it uh do you have like the courses put in there for like pasac Valley you know inro to work Sciences or something is this many points is that something that is put in by by the counselors or is that how is that put in there just because again GPA is so important and I know these kids sit and figure out their GPA and they go into like uh Google and you know calculate gpas and it's a major source of stress for them so I in my mind it's so important to get that accurate so how is that put in there yeah and both so to answer this question there is a school reports template that both schools every High School navigates this differently because the information is different but both schools have access to a school reports template in which they're um labeling all of the courses offered at the high school School Advanced courses AP um depending on what's offered they're able to indicate that and then allow themselves or the students to indicate additional courses that they're taking so that's all included by each team individually in case any courses differ between the two high schools and if you want to pause one second Dr stumes is also supplementing that answer okay yeah that's what does that I want to see yeah yeah I should have just actually that's true what I'm reading from what he had just texted I think there's two elements I think the GPA are uploaded automatically but then the GPA that's shared is the one that's agreed upon um okay you know what I think there's a delay because he's supplementing the other question um he says the reach Target features to be used as a guide it's not a science there's so many factors involved in administ an admissions decision not just grades and test scores please emphasize this which actually we have someone coming to our I think December board meeting that's going to actually talk about this very specifically um who's the College of admissions a former College admissions counselor um who does a parent presentation for our parents in the fall um but we asked him if he would do a presentation for the board and the public uh as well because if you don't have a senior you may not have seen that presentation and I thought it would be help he's very good yeah I thought it would be very helpful um for us to hear that kind of like in advance and I know we had a lot of questions in the spring about this um from parents so I thought it would be helpful to kind of hear this like okay so here's our new score program and then having um this person come in and this expert I shouldn't say this person this expert come in and talk a little bit about that and what this means to be a Target or a reach and how you can kind of uh determine on your own whether or not a Target or a reach if it says it in score is probably what we're going to be saying he also said that the GPA and score comes directly from Genesis real time so it's coming from Genesis real time and then I'm I'm assuming that before it's actually submitted to the college that that would be the transcript that's agreed upon between the student and the counselor and obviously the parent so I don't think anything is is um submitted uh until it's agreed upon but it looks like realtime GPA are informing those targets the reaches and sort of getting the scattergrams um because we didn't see an example of that but I've seen that on other screens where it kind of gives you like kind of a percentage of how many kids from your school applied how many got in um you know what their overall fouryear success rate was at that University or um like schools yes Jen yeah I have a quick question I'm not sure if score handles this but um as far as our guidance Department do we uh make any indications for for-profit private and public colleges yeah that's actually in score uh so Keegan he's asking is there any um indication for a student to look at whether a university is for profit public private yeah that's tied into the college profile so students will see that that's also part of the iPads share uh students will see that quote label on the college profile and then depending on the college that students are matriculating to or applying to we also pull that information into reports so if the board if the counselors wanted to see Trends or are just curious how many like what percentage of our students are going to a for-profit or a private public whatever that looks like institution we're collecting that data once students are moving forward and uh just to follow up on that are you pulling information from the college scorecard by the government statistics yes okay that tells you the uh rate of expected income after a graduate um graduates from college is that also in those reports that's that's all shared um our product team would have more insight into where that would be where they might want to pull that in going forward we do though have well we we have that information available um our product team has talked about incorporating that in different ways before but right now that's not explicitly visible to students okay all right that's I'll I'll make a note of that though that's a really good question and point yeah that's a good yeah any other questions thank you thank you so much thank you for doing it this way with us and thank you for sharing all of that of course I will send this presentation and if you have any questions just let me know great thanks everyone next we have the technology and canvas update by Tracy Lee Mrs henriksson and Scott Jones thank you that was a good idea yours was actually the speaker see coming up so every summer we do a new new teacher I'm going to just give a little Prelude while they're setting up we do a new teacher orientation um every summer and um Scott and Maria actually come in and train our new teachers on how to do genis Canvas um their section is probably like a solid half day full day maybe that you guys do for the new teachers so um we ask them to come in and give a a much briefer but a little bit of an overview on how to navigate canvas because we're really trying to encourage parents to use canvas um you know as a tool to help um with communication to help um parents understand what students are looking at and what they're learning um and also just to make sure that parents understand that there there's a lot of functionality in canvas that answers a lot of questions about what the unit is what the tests look like um you know what's coming up so we kind of turned to our uh resident experts um to give a little bit of an overview here to the board um some of you may not have uh students yet at the high school or you may have students who graduated um before we use these Technologies so I want everyone to have a sense of what it is that we're talking about when we're talking about these things and this is such a great tool um to stay connected uh that I wanted to make sure that we give a a quick overview so thank you so much for coming out and doing this for us tonight we really appreciate it um and I'll turn it over to Tracy thank you thank you thank you everyone good evening my name is Tracy Lee I'm the technology director for the district um so like Sarah had said we are here to give a technology update for the year as well as go over canvas and Genesis for our parents um so the first thing I want to do is kind of recap our 2024 work that we did um we had a great freshman laptop distribution I want to thank my technology department Michelle RZ Ross kler Jamie bu bakian Scott Jones Armen hegine Willie Pico and Maria Valentino for really helping us um get over 400 laptops successfully distributed to all of our freshmen um we also added additional security cameras and new video surveillance system um thank you Armen and Willie for taking the lead on this we had about eight new cameras installed thanks to a grant that we achieved um last year and we also have a new video surveillance system that we are able to view our cameras um wirelessly through the cloud so anything web based we're able to see all of the cameras um for additional security um and we also set up professional development for our administrators and our school resource officers to learn this new system um over the summer we also did a big Genesis rollover and a my school bucks rollover which happens annually over the summer um I want to thank Maria Valentino for taking that on and then we also developed new Wi-Fi procedures for the district this year um wiie Pico was instrumental in doing that we now have parent Wi-Fi accounts so if you attended back to school night at either of our high schools Valley or Hills um parents were able to connect to the Wi-Fi and that actually will now stay on whatever device you connected it to um it's available to the parents anytime after school hours up until 8:00 p.m. um and if you were not able to attend back to school night or were not able to scan that QR code to get on the Wi-Fi you can always stop by your school's front office to get the credentials for that um we also have a guest and daily sub Wi-Fi account set up we have small groups Wi-Fi accounts so if anybody comes to visit our district for um for the day we give them a Wi-Fi account we have large group and events set up for Wi-Fi as well and this is helping keep our district safe and our Network safe as well so we are going to be talking about Genesis canvas and class link we uh have a new integration with Genesis and canvas this year teachers are now able to grade in canvas and with a click of a button pass back that grade into Genesis so it kind of eliminates that um where you have to do all of your assignments in canvas and then teachers are grading it but then they have to go into Genesis and put the grades in um so it goes from canvas to Genesis it doesn't go vice versa just one way um and I have with me Scott Jones here he's our technology specialist who put together a very thorough tutorial we um kind of had two pilot teachers we have Maria henriksson here and Kevin Killian was also one of our pilot teachers kind of go through it all with Scott and he was able to set them up successfully and we will be rolling it out to our teachers um in the next couple of weeks but I want Scott to um be able to go over the um the grade pass p thank you for having me again my name's Scott um the grade Passback has been something that we've been trying to get working for probably 10 years now um canvas was around probably 10 years we've been using it Genesis maybe longer I don't know um but they never kind of spoke to each other okay so what teachers had to do when they graded something they had to take the time to go into Genesis add what it was the name of the assignment put the grade in so it's not the end of the world obviously but you know if if every time you do that it takes 30 seconds to a minute and you have 20 kids in your class and five classes and you multiply that by however however many teachers are in the district it's a lot of time Al together to do this so uh over the spring last spring I guess canvas reached out to us said hey we finally can work excuse me with Genesis so we were excited about that um we had some transition in leadership there Paul Zeller had started the process um you know it was a little tricky there for the transition but Tracy came in grabbed the ball kind of crossed the uh goal line maybe even spiked the ball um it took a little longer than than expected but it it is running it's functional it does work we've decided to test it in a very small way um Maria here uh graciously volunteered to work with me to set it up and do some testing uh and Kevin Killian up at Hills same thing so what I'm trying to do is get feedback from this very small group and then potentially expand that group to a larger group of uh teachers to test get their feedback and um kind of update streamline and improve the instructions that we have so that uh the teachers can use to go um forward do I am I on that page oh oh you have okay so that this is um this is the the tutorial guide that I have based on all the information from the canvas websites I condensed it consol validated it into one page that we will share with all of the teachers um step by step there's a couple videos embedded in there it looks like an awful lot but in essence it's three steps you have to synchronize your canvas grade book with your Genesis grade book and then you have to tell canvas which grades you'd like to be sent over to Genesis and then ultimately step three is do you want to do this manually like some things maybe you don't want sent over to Genesis um other things maybe you just want to switch the button and not worry about it so it's really three steps the tricky part is that first one where teachers have to synchronize their canvas Gradebook with their Genesis grade book um so we're trying to roll that out um hopefully we have uh more participation as the year goes on but it's exciting it's a timesaver uh teacher been asking for it for years and we're happy that we could finally provide it for them um yeah so I'll have uh Maria henrikson talk a little bit about her experience as a teacher using the grade Passback any questions before I step off okay thank you thank you hi um so years ago Paul Zeller and I tried it under the old system and it was ridiculous forget it if there was a comma out of place an extra space it didn't work so Scott we we tried it on my Calculus class because if you screw up their grades they're only seniors does it really matter um but that that was a joke um no it was well before the the snapshot in time but it works it works really nicely and what's great about it is you can Auto pass or you can choose to pass so there's a lot of stuff I'm not going to pass I set up all my assignments in canvas but I don't put grades in for them because canvas is where we tell kids what they have to do you know it's it's their assignments for the week but not everything gets a grade in canvas but I have colleagues where everything goes into canvas and gets graded in canvas and now it goes automatically back and forth so there's versatility there so it's going to make a lot less work for a lot of teachers especially teachers Who quiz on canvas grades are going to go right back into Genesis so and it transfers information that it was a canvas assignment it copies the dates and it's it's not that hard to set up actually so it was good questions and now Scott's going to come back up and he's going to review the parent Guardian Observer role that's available in Genesis so I'm sorry not Genesis canvas so if you're new to our school or if you're a freshman parent you might want to pay attention to this because you can become an observer in your child's canvas class um it's for anybody that wants to see their child's canvas accounts it does have limited permissions obviously because you cannot submit assignments for your students um but like students observers cannot view a course until it is published and the course is started and we highly recommend that um you enroll as an observer so you kind of get that bird's eye view of what your children are are seeing um and also a tip from our president uh do it do this in a website browser don't do it in the canvas app um because the website browser will give you a lot more capabilities within there so uh Scott's going to come talk about canvas observers yes one other thing I wanted to say was if you go through the pasak valley District website uh you can click on the link there and that actually takes you to PV so that's actually so I get it on my phone now when I go through the PV website oh that's great because it was really frustrating trying to figure the whole thing out as know yeah thank you so uh that's just thank you for another 10p things can I ask you a question about that I know Genesis is closed down till 3 o'clock um is canvas also closed down till 3 o'clock then no it's yeah cus doesn't have the capability for that but Genesis does for grading yeah uh Genesis was always the site that had the official grades on it and that's why the kids were always jumping in there um canvas has a grade book but it was never the official grade book so U that was always open and it was always open because it's used all day by all the classes so that's open that's not closed um so as far as an observer account goes a lot of teachers love when parents sign up as observers uh because it helps the parents stay involved uh in an easy way they don't have to email the teachers all the time what's going on am I missing something what's the assignment when's this due if you sign up as an observer you essentially have a readon uh to use a computer term uh sort of a account to see what the student has you could see their calendar you could see the assignments you could see the discussions you could see just about everything that the student can see you just can't do anything you can't contribute to a discussion you can't uh submit a test you can't do anything but you can certainly see that your student um couple of their assignments are late because they're over right there on the dashboard saying this is late so you can find out about that um you can see on the dashboard what's coming up what's going to be due so while uh the students are mainly responsible for this it never hurts to have an an extra set of caring eyes to to check out what's going on and involved parents uh make for very good students too um another set of eyes never hurts um it's a simple process if um if you go to the the main valy page so on the website on the website if um if you click on the parents link the main Parent Link there's the steps to create an observer account it's basically a two-part system the student has to go in it's it's a collaboration between parent and student so they can Bond the the student has to create this code and the code is unique it only lasts for seven days and can only be used one time so the student goes in um if we scroll down in the in the settings there's actually a button right there where that red arrow is it's hard to see because it's small but it says pair with Observer and then if if you scroll down a bit more the second red arrow hard to see again but it's a six-digit alpha numeric string so the student creates this unique code second part would be for the parent also pretty easy so if we go back to that link yep parent instructions maybe okay that's big enough so the first Arrow here it says parent of a canvas user click here for an account so if you have if you don't have an account you want to do that so you'd click there and you're presented with this information and lo and behold number five at the bottom is a field to put in that unique pairing code so you enter all this information you password this pairing code you say start participating and what happens is you're brought to the canvas dashboard that looks exactly like your students dashboard all their courses are there basically everything you need to see is there for you and that that's essentially it and we encourage parents to do it it's easy enough every once in a while during the year I have to uh work with parents over the phone because it's just not clear how to do it or whatever but but we're always able to get them through but buy and large it's a simple process most people take advantage of it but I think most teachers and Maria could uh verify this would would wish that more parents would do it um so I don't I think I C yeah so unless you have any other questions about I have a a question do you have to put that code in every year or put it in as a freshman and then you get it automatically there on it yeah once you're linked to the student you're linked until the student is gone and then interestingly enough when when the student graduates and the student gets wiped out of canvas The Observer count is still there ahting like like a leg Legacy thing yeah so uh yeah it's a one time deal and it's also easy enough if you're if you're a parent and you have more than one student uh once you have your account set up it's it's very easy and we have instructions up there too it's very easy to add another student and then when you have two or three students there's it's an obvious drop- down box right on the top of your dashboard who do you want to look at it's it's canvas has done a pretty good job at setting that up and I would agree if you're going to set it up do it from the website s ite not the app you can certainly follow once you have it set up the app is pretty good but I think the initial setup is better on the website I've seen information that you've put out uh Scott about this going out to freshman parents do we have a way to run a report to see if uh upper classman parents have done this or to Target that information going back out to them as well um and maybe that's a Tracy question I don't know is that something canvas can tell us like if there's parents that have not ever set up an observer account oh yeah um or maybe this is going out to all parents I just know I've sent I've seen the instructions specifically going out to freshman parents for sure perhaps there's a report uh students without observers you know we could take that from I could look into that that'd be great yeah okay can we just send a reminder out to parents like through parents Square yeah yeah we can do that and I think actually I I think that we sent a reminder out you know what I got to check this yeah let me make a note of that um because I think what we did at the end of the year last year is when we sent out the reminder to check Genesis I think we sent out a reminder to create the Observer account to all parents at that time but it might be helpful to see kind of like is there people that we could Target to say hey you're getting this because you haven't done this right question quickly for our student uh reps have you guys set up Observer accounts for your parents and um like so looking at it without being in canvas it looks tricky was it tricky or like you just okay I love it I love it so um Andrew didn't have his mic on but he said it was not hard do have questions any other questions okay thank you thank you thank you and thank you for working to set this up and um thank you uh Maria for being the test case on it um I know that this is something that hopefully will be so much easier for our teachers but also hopefully we'll give students and parents that information kind of more quickly and less uh with less confusion because then it's not that there's a grade in canvas but not in Genesis and there's like that uncertainty I think this is great and hopefully it saves our teachers a lot of time because it just seems so much more efficient so thank you and thank you Tracy for spiking the ball as Scot thanks Scott thank you um to continue on with our technology updates we are also rolling out class link uh class link is a new single sign on solution it's a great um program that allows our students and staff to be able to sign into an application without remembering one more password I'm sure we're all frustrated a lot of times where we can forget some certain passwords to certain applications or even just our email sometimes and it's great to be able to do just one single tap into the class link dashboard um it's also a safe and secure way and again we're looking at protecting our District's infrastructure in um and also protecting our student data so it allows us to safely and securely share student data with our thirdparty vendors um so this is uh one way that we share rosters with them um class link will also track our subscription analytics and give us data regarding usage so making sure that we're getting the most bang for our buck with all of these applications and making sure that we're uh we're using them um and then this will be a gradual roll out throughout the school year um with all of the applications in class link by September 2025 we recently just rolled out um EXL into class link as well as brain pop into class link can I uh add to that the one benefit that I see of using class link is that there's no lost time for students to be logging in correct so once you open your laptop you're logged into all the applications you may need as a student um which means that you know you're not sitting there while you're trying to log in and then you forgot your password and then your friend logged in and then you're getting nervous because he logged in and he's already on question one and like it's just automatic which I just think like deescalate that anxiety level for all of our students and just makes it easier to get on the applications that we're trying to do so thank you yes thank you um and then uh we also rolled out Gemini as Dr bot had mentioned at the beginning of this meeting um for students so the first week of November Gemini became available finally um to our uh students that are 13 years and older in our Google workspace for Education um we began to onboard our students during the second week of November and um our ELA teachers did a terrific job of onboarding our students by showing them the introduction video was a short video was about 3 minutes long um from Google explaining Gemini and after that video they facilitated short discussions with their students about potential benefits responsibility and use of Gemini and they also reviewed with them our ai's district um procedures and policies and our plagiarism policy as well um the teachers emphasized the importance of ethical considerations private pracy and the use of Gemini as a tool to not to enhance and to not replace their own critical thinking um Gemini for Education also has additional privacy features which are designed specifically for our educational setting student data will not be used to train AI models and all of their privacy is protected which I think is very important to know um an email was sent out by my department at the beginning um of last week to all parents Guardians students administrators teachers and all staff all received the email about the Gemini for Education roll out um and we will continue to help our teachers and our students keep or make the most out of Gemini with their uh classrooms and provide ongoing training and support just like Dr bot had mentioned in the beginning of the meeting um and we're also keeping a close eye on how the students are using Gemini and giving them resources so that they succeed with using it um go on to future updates so those were the things that we were doing just in the last few months um coming down in our timeline we are now um providing registration online so in the past when we have online registration for incoming um 9th grade students and at the beginning of the year um but during the school year we kind of resorted back to a like a paper packet for these families that were coming in the beginning of this school year we did have a lot of families come in some of them not speaking English um some of them were returning students as well so we wanted to work with the uh School counseling office to streamline this process and to avoid the interruptions that we having we were having during the school day um so making an online registration portal was is vital in doing that so we are in the process of creating that on our district website um it reduces paperwork for our our administrators and for the secretaries as well and allows for easier data collection and and for accuracy um and then we also provide a user fa like friendly interface for this the teachers and this or I'm sorry teachers the administrators and the students to be able to um go in and and register and then one important thing is that translation tools are also available online so it allows for families who don't speak English to be able to translate all of the necessary paperwork uh for them to register um and it also provides a clear timeline for our parents and Guardians our administrators and all of the stakeholders that are involved in the registration process so that they are aware of when things will happen during registration um the other thing I wanted to speak about is our Region 2 website um region two if you're not familiar is our um pasak Valley Council for speal special education we have seven school districts in the pasak valley of um and those participating districts are Emerson Hillsdale Montvale Park Ridge pasak Valley Regional River Vale and Westwood Regional and we also include Park Academy which is our therapeutic school we all of that all fall under Region 2 which is a very large part of our website so we decided to give them their own domain so that it will people will be able to find the information quickly and efficiently um and we're also going to have we're going to also update that section of the website as well as put um all of the forms and the documents that Region 2 used to have uh with paper and we're going to start to digitize that um and then it'll also allow all of the the districts that participate in Region 2 to be able to find that information easily and effectively and not you know constantly have to go through email phone calls um kind of like the oldfashioned way of contacting Region 2 to get all that information now all of it it's going to be online and it's going to be streamline so our department is helping Region 2 streamline all of their processes and providing the district um digitized forms any questions about online registration or region two um in our technology plan we are currently working with the uh curriculum committee as well as the techn technology committee and that is made up of board members teachers administrators parents and students um we are at the end of our three-year technology plan so we're working with them to develop a new one uh we'll continue to Target our district vision of creating a culture of innovation inquiry and individuality and we will expand on the district technology Disaster Recovery plan and our department is working to create an emergency response plan so um monthly we do a tabletop exercise where we respond to emergency um situations and we have um all the stakeholders involved and we decided as a tech department that there doesn't isn't really an emergency response plan for if the internet goes down if teachers don't have access to Google Drive if teachers don't have access to Genesis if they don't have access to Canvas what are they going to do um so kind of resorting to that type of plan will help them minimize the interruptions and the disruptions of what an internet if the internet were to go down whether it's the day for an hour or even a couple of days which has happened throughout the nation whenever districts are either um compromised with their internet or even if the power goes down um and we'll continue to work with sending districts to use similar resources and streamlined processes when available and the last thing I have to report on which is very big is our laptop refresh we are at the end of our threeyear release with apple um so we have had great success with apple we love all of their products and uh Dr bachenheimer and I just attended last week um the Apple distinguished schools leadership conference in Orlando at full sale University um where we were inspired by all of the um all of the distinguished schools that have been uh participating in apple and they were had great presentations and events for us there um so we'll continue to talk we're going to start the lab toop refresh talks um but we're also doing our due diligence by looking at other products and asking for feedback from our Tech and curriculum committee um which consists of key stakeholders including our parents students teachers staff administrators and we have two board members Jim Stanis and Deb stefins who are on that um committee and we're going to continue to ask for feedback for from that committee um we look forward to working with everyone with this technology refresh and you know Gathering diverse perspective is important from all of the stakeholders so that we are benefiting our entire Learning Community that's it any questions any questions okay thank you Tracy thank you before we move back on uh back up to routine matters uh Mrs stefins pointed out we still have students here and it's late in the evening so uh we are going to do comments from the public next citizens are invited to make comments regarding agenda items and are limited to three minutes according to the pasak Valley Regional High School District Board of Education policy number 0167 persons wishing to speak must upon being recognized rise sign in and state their name town of residents and which agenda item they are referencing go to you go to the podium yep good evening um my name is ety and this is Jesse and we're company Managers from pasak theater um we wanted to come and formally invite you all to our fall play that is this coming week I know that you guys got like a little informational thing that'll be read later tonight but I wanted to come in person and Inter like um and invite you to come see it uh you guys can uh expect any email from either me or uh Eddie um soon with a link to buy tickets and also a code to get uh a free ticket as your board of end um members and we'd love to see you guys there uh this week if you come be sure to come say hi we're both going to be in the lobby oh okay awesome thank you so much thank you for waiting this long too of can I ask them a quick question course so um can you share a little bit about um and I'm I'm definitely putting you on the spot a little bit but there's something kind of unique about the show that you're doing this fall that isn't the same do you want us to just share a little bit about how the show was created yeah so the show this year it's called when this is over and all the students in the cast got to share their stories with the directors who wrote it into a script so our show is a collection of stories from the students about their lives and where they want to go in the future hence the name when this is over when there when high school is over when college is over and of course not being able to skip over one of the craziest times in our lives what happened when the pandemic was over it's it's so cool it's such a great concept um the other thing could you just share how many students are involved because this is the first year that we've done a joint program and I am just blown away uh by the camaraderie I see between the two schools and the total number of students that are in that Auditorium right now is unbelievable do you want to share just a little bit about how um how many kids are participating and what that looks like of course um so there's a really good like distribution of kids between cast and crew and in total there's almost a 100 I believe I don't know the exact number off the top of my head I I think it's close to 100 it's really close to 100 um but it's really fun at least for on our side we love getting to work with the other with like our like sister School and cuz it's not something that we usually get to do but we're really enjoying it and the amount of kids in a theater program in high school it's really great do yeah and I mean it's just an example I'm from riverville and from Valley and Eddie is from uh mon Bon Hills so uh it's been great that we've been able to work so closely and kind of like uh take the Traditions from hills and from Valley and combine it into one program uh and that we have like that 50/50% perspective for the company management side um so that's been really great it it's incredible and I can't wait I'm going to attend the um senior citizen matina tomorrow I can't wait to see it um so any board members who would like to join us and any members of the public um we do have the senior citizen mat tomorrow morning and then um the show this weekend and just to reiterate the show's going up Thursday Friday and Saturday yes so it's going to be Thursday the 21st Friday the 22nd and Saturday the 23rd um all three nights will have a 700 p.m. performance and Saturday we'll also have a 2 p.m. mat awesome this is so wonderful thank you so much thank you so much for coming and sharing this and I cannot wait to see the show of course thank you thank you break a leg okay so let's go back up to routine matters and we're going to go down to the bottom we'll have the student reports first uh so we'll first have Andrew Varian from pasc hills hello everyone uh first for classroom items uh in Mr ul's Advanced topics computer science class the students are creating an app to help the administration become more efficient with scheduling and assigning subtit substitutes for specific classes and teachers for hallway and pasac period duties during their prep periods on Friday November 8th students from Miss Elkin's chamber choir class participated in the Allstate mixed choir 2024 performance they learned the mus they learned all the music in over 3-day period while being in Atlantic City with the top singers in the state um and in connection with the recent presidential election Dr fling's AP langu Language and Composition class hosted a mock election where students uh were assigned a candidate to discuss uh their political beliefs and argue their side for future presidency moving on to co-curricular items first on Tuesday November 12th five veterans from the American Le Legion in Park Ridge visited pasak Hills during periods 1 through 3 on Tuesday during the event students from various history classes and members of the history Club had the opportunity to engage with veterans listening to their stories asking questions uh gaining a firsthand experience and understanding their military experiences this event gave students a unique perspective on History deepening their appreciation for sacrifices made by student uh made by service members and highlighting the importance of Veterans Day in support of senior Jamie Brown who is diagnosed with leukemia this past year the teas against cancer Club is having a blood drive in collaboration with the monville police department and vitalin blood drive trucks will be at Memorial School on November 30th and all and all are welcome to donate uh in honor of Jim's fight the club is also selling merchandise for team Jamie and the profits will be donated to leukemia research uh Fund in her name additionally on November 9th the interact Club cleaned up a trail behind the municipal building uh in Montville where they removed Moss replaced rundown boards on the trail cleaned up weeds and garbages and trimmed overgrown bushes and trees in total the club contributed over six hours of their time that day to ensure a safer and cleaner environment for their Community uh lastly the Latino Hispanic Heritage Club is running a sock drive to support those in need uh as temperatures drop this fall in collaboration with the student immigrant Alliance and the Muslim Student Union the club is collecting socks to be donated to the mayor's office in pic uh the city reached out to local high schools for help and our Hills Community has stepped up to the challenge the drive will continue until November 20th and all students are encouraged to drop off their donations in one of four collection boxes found throughout the school in athletic items congratulations to senior Abigail roach on her commitment to Stony Brook University to play Division 1 soccer Abby had her signing on Wednesday November 13th where she was surrounded by family and friends and her team to support this tremendous achievement and for my fun fact this coming Thursday is 8th grade open house and then for my joke of the day why was the math book set it had too many problems thank you and this concludes my board report thank you Andrew and next we have Ella from pasak Valley okay hi so I'm going to start off with our co-curricular items uh so first off pv's uh executive Council held its annual fundraiser for homes for our troops which is an organization uh dedicated to helping uh returning wounded veterans like in our community um so during the week of Veterans Day the council held a volleyball tournament fundraiser so people play paid to play and then also paid to watch um and then thanks to the extreme generosity of our community we were able to donate $500 to the fund uh just from one day uh so thank you to all who donated and participated in the tournament for my second item on November 6th Valley's history Club also hosted the 10 me members of the American Legion um and they spoke to history classes all throughout the day um I actually got to speak with them it's really good and really cool and I think a lot of people like took advantage of it in like um a really beneficial way um and so obviously we're really grateful to the community veterans who um decided to come and talk to us and for their dedication to the country um and then for the last co-curricular item obviously as the two um crew members were talking about from the 21st to the 23rd the theater students from both schools are joining together um and it's over 75 students um who created like a really I think think thought provoking performance um and a really personal one that I think is going to be really relatable um and of course it was written created entirely by the students with the directors and they promis it to be an impactful experience for all for our athletic items uh congratulations to the valley football team for earning their super Football Conference uh League Champs title in addition on November 15th the team beat Riverdale for the north one group three state sectional title uh this is Valley's first sectional Championship since 2014 uh so congrats to the coaching staff and all of the players for being league and state sectional Champs and good luck to the team this Friday with their next round of states for item number two congrats to Jeff Jasper on being named The pasak Valley Chamber of Commerce citizen of the Year basically the Chamber of Commerce represents eight towns in the pasy Valley area um and the awards ceremony dinner was held at Seasons uh Mr Ken serajian provided a really touching speech uh when he introduced Mr Jasper and Holly shapy our representative uh represented Mr Jasper with the citizen of the Year plaque um a really welld deserved recognition and it honors Mr Jasper's significant impact and countless years of service in our PV Community uh so congrats to him on this tremendous achievement for my fun facts um the executive council is going to host our second Valley cup of the year um beginning on November 25th so in a couple weeks um each grade is going to compete for Valley Cup points every day by dressing up and then we'll uh end the week off with uh pepper Ali Valley cup assembly on the 27th uh so some of the events include a speedball tournament a Thanksgiving Day themed relay and a game of knockout so good luck to all the grads who are competing in this week's Valley cup okay for my joke it's a turkey joke what do you call a running turkey fast food fast food this concludes my report for November 2024 thank you Andrew and Ella so now let's go back up and uh we'll I will give the governance committee uh committee meeting report so we met on October 16 16th it was um myself Miss stefins U Mr sankis and Mrs Wang and we discussed board Norms new board uh Board of Ed member orientation packet reviews and policy 0145 um so our board Norms we drafted from some seemingly obvious measure measures such as practice respectful and professional communication to arriving prepared for meetings by reviewing agenda and material materials beforehand we then combined that with suggestions from board members that we received during the retreat uh such as attending at least one to two student-based events each year and participating in new board member orientation we also reviewed a new board member orientation packet which we have not had thus far during the retreat and in the past few years we've heard how confusing certain procedures and particip and board members is so um you know part of governance we we are going we are in the process of creating that packet uh we also discuss policy 0145 and how it pertains to our current board um so moving forward we'll once again review the updated board Norms document and the new board of ed member orientation packet and hope is to finalize it by the end of the year but I have to say every so often there's a few things that I'm like oh we could add that into the packet and we could add this into the packet so it may not necessarily be at the end of the year but uh it's going to be soon and it's going to be a uh nice comprehensive thing for new board members and honestly for all of us because we don't we have nothing in written up to this point so it'll be nice for all of us to have that uh next we have Stephanie with the paf liaison report I know it's late so I my list is getting shorter and shorter so Wednesday November 20th um PFA is sponsoring a hidden in plain sight show um and then to add to what Drew shared on November 21st in addition to the play the eighth grade open house so it's for Woodcliff Lake students eighth graders and Mont Vil and they're going to walk around just like they do for uh back to school night um and then December 11th is another PFA Parent Academy show screenagers for the elementary school um and Mr strunkus and Christina Schneider gave a guidance talk um and we're gonna have at PFA some somebody giving a special talk so the guidance was the special talk and what's pertinent for us is this senior class has a n 193 students and two-thirds of them are going to college and since one of our goals our board goals is um to maybe normalize non- College um future um Sarah bot was able to send us since 20 in the last three years of stats and it's only like a small small percentage of students who go to non twoyear or four-year colleges so to looking at those numbers our question for us is um if we normalize it is that going to increase the amount of students who are interested in non- colleges or is it something because it's such a few a small number that we don't want to waste too much time or resources on it it's just something to think about because maybe if we give them more options they will choose more of the options and I think everyone saw the numbers like it's 2% or less um and then the other thing the only last thing is um principal Wheeland um talked about um well Mark Russo shared that there's MLK activities and he wanted to expand on that so he's asking PFA for help on that and there there's a question asked about adding for the music class AP or honors and that's something that we ongoing that we're going to work on that's it thank you Stephanie next we have the curriculum committee meeting report by Mr stankis all right get ready it's going to be a long night here no well uh thank you for Tracy for taking away half of my report by giving her our own committee overview um so I'm going to talk about the uh sorry over there I'm going to talk about the uh curriculum committee so we had the uh actually the large group committee meeting yes and we usually have several we have the the smaller committee and then the large committee this one was the large committee meeting there was like uh 16 members there uh parents teach ERS supervisors so uh Dr bachenheimer talked about The Five-Year Plan of committee revisions evaluations and uh he went through um let me just pull up real quick some of the um the chart here so right now we are in the evaluations uh section we're doing uh music and Performing Arts World Language um consumer and family life um science uh let's see what other one oh and elll so those are the ones being evaluated this year uh certain ones are in the revision stage and that is mathematics and special education and then we have the implementation stage for the newer things fizzed and health is being implemented this year and Industrial arts and Technologies being implemented so these are on a rotating basis and um so Dr bachenheimer talked about that then the supervisor uh got up they each took their turn talking about their respective areas and things that they're looking to do this year things that have been done in the curriculum I uh submit a report of the minutes so that everybody can look at that if they want to so does anybody have any questions make it short okay all right if you do just uh email me check out the the minutes it's all there um I think it's pretty extensive okay all right you thank you thank you okay so now let's move on to the minutes for the October 28th meeting and the executive uh session can I get a motion so move second any discussion V call please Mr usam Miss Calderon yes Mrs Swang yes M Keller yes Mrs Martin yes Mr Stanis yes Miss stepin yes Mr Weaver yes yes regular abstain executive Mrs bares yes moving over to policy we have four consent agenda items can I get a motion please so second any discussion roll call please Mr Yami Miss Calderone yes Mrs Swang yes Miss Keller yes Mrs Martin yes Mr Stanis yes Miss stephin yes Mr Weaver uh yes one and two abstain three and four Mrs vges yes next we have education for which we have one consent agenda item can I get a motion so second any discuss Mrs Martin yes Mr Stanis yes Miss stepin yes Mr Weaver yes Mrs Baris yes next we have human resources for which we have 19 agenda items everyone see the supplemental can I get a motion please so move second any discussion question will call please Mr Yami Miss Calderon yes Mrs Swang yes M Keller yes Mrs Martin yes Mr Stanis yes M stefins yes Mr Weaver yes Mrs Vargis yes next we have Finance for which we have 13 consent agenda items can I get a motion please so moved second any discussion V call please Mr usami Miss Calderone um I'm G to abstain from number 10 yes to everything else Mrs hang yes Miss Keller yes Mrs Martin yes Mr Stanis yes Miss stepin yes Mr Weaver yes Mrs Vargis yes next we have old business does anyone have any old business next we have new business does anyone have any new business go ahead Mrs Wang um I spoke with um Dr Natasha Crandle to see if we could hire her like we did for the board retreat on talking about social emotional learning like appropriateness not appropriateness and well she has a whole elaborate thing it can't come up on my pH but she has a PhD in education and maybe we can look into that's actually a really good great idea educate us yeah absolutely do you want to send me that contact information perfect thank you thank you next we have comments from the public citizens are invited to make comments and are limited to three minutes according to the pasak Valley Regional High School District Board of Education policy number 0167 persons wishing to speak must upon being recognized rise sign in and state their name and town of residence anyone no next we have we will enter into executive session can I get a motion to go into executive session so moved second so about 15 minutes for executive session and action will be taken afterward e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e can I get a motion to go back into uh public session please so moved second uh next we have uh the sidebar with the PVA uh can I get a motion please so moved second any discussion roll call please Mr Yami Miss Calderone yes Mrs Wang yes Miss Keller yes Mrs Martin yes Mr Stanis yes Miss stepin yes Mrs Vargis yes can I get a motion to adjourn the meeting so move second meeting is adjourned