here. Here, here. Uh, please join me in a flag, salute, pledge allegiance. The United States of America to theublic The Ridgewood Board of Education has been meeting in executive session
pursuant to NJSA 10:4-12. The minutes of this meeting will be released when the need for confidentiality no longer exists. Pursuant to the requirements of the open public meetings act, advanced notice has been given to the star
ledger, the record, and the clerk of the village of Ridgewood. In addition, notices were posted in the office of the board secretary and in all school buildings. Welcome everyone and um we will start with uh our
presentation or All right, great. Why don't we uh why don't we actually start with our um if if the if the board board sees fit. Um if we can can we jump ahead to the Rwood High School principal advisory committee presentation? Absolutely. Yeah. I'm
sorry that's that got placed uh later in the in the or in the order but if if the board's okay with that then uh I'm going to invite we have a we we're very blessed to have a well-dressed group of RHS students right now with us who represent the principal advisory committee who are here to give a really
uh interesting presentation on the state of generative AI being used in at Rididgewood High School. AI is a topic of interest for many folks in the community. Um, and actually I had a really I had a serendipitous experience talking with some folks in the Garden State Coalition of Schools and
Legislative Committee I'm on and uh they specifically um just by way of conversation I was I was was reported out that members of the Senate Education Committee in New Jersey Senate Education Committee in New Jersey were just talking about AI and were particularly
interested in understanding it better. And so I suggested, well, you know, we have some students who are going to be presenting to our board. Maybe we can share that information with them. So, we are going to send this uh this presentation uh of our the our students put together here uh more broadly through the Garden State Coalition of Schools throughout the state and we are
going to send copies of it to the Senate members of the Senate Education Committee. Uh and maybe maybe we'll have an opportunity to share some information with them as well. But in the meantime, uh they have been working very hard for quite some time on this presentation. Uh they have been working under the guidance of Mr. Nas who is the principal of Rididgewood High School who is here
with us tonight and um I've uh he runs a principal advisory committee which is just a great group. I would advise any principal especially a high school principal to form a similar group. Uh our students are all members of of the of the of the committee. They attend on a weekly basis. Uh they advise they've
advised all kinds of things from late start time to um to the district cell phone policy, the school cell phone policy and now they're now they're advising on generative AI. So, it's a great group. Um, and before we introduce uh um the members of the group up, first
I'd like to invite up Mr. Nyas to give them a proper introduction. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Dr. Swars. Uh it's great it's my great pleasure to be here tonight with this uh wonderful group of students. Uh I've been doing the principal advisory group since I started
as the uh director of guidance back in 2008. Um and the group has evolved as Dr. Schwarz said. We worked a lot on uh some many presentations and initiatives at the high school and uh this is the latest. They just presented to the faculty um a couple months ago which was
a great kickoff to our PD day. Um, and you'll get to hear from them tonight about uh their thoughts on AI. Um, but I'm very proud of this group. I'm happy to have uh this particular club under um under Rididgewood High School and thanks for having us here tonight. Take it away
you guys. All right. Okay. Over there. There we go. Um well, hello. Uh nice to see you all on the uh the other side of the table uh this time. Um so I'm Harrison, uh Harrison Burns, most of you know, senior at Rididgewood High School. I'm
here with my group, the principal advisory board, which we just got two fantastic introductions. Uh but just a little bit about who we are for a minute. uh you know like we said um our group that meets directly with Mr. Nyas uh once a week to uh talk about tackle
school issues talk about different things happening around the school uh over the past few years we've we've really covered and discussed a variety of topics from uh you know the later start initiative and uh the phone policy in classrooms this year to even just you know simple things like how much
everybody hates run days. Uh so today we're here uh we've done some presentations in the past. Uh like mentioned we talked about AI to the faculty of Bridgette High School. Uh and we thought it would be relevant to share that uh today here with you. Um you know as AI is such a pressing popular topic
these days uh there's a lot of discussion around you know what the policies in school should be. And so we thought it would be appropriate to you know bring some student voices here and share kind of from the student body side of things uh some of our thoughts on that. Um so that'll bring us to our objectives which I'll just go over
really quickly. Uh the first being usage. Uh we're just going to talk about AI how AI is used in schools uh by both students and the faculty. Uh the next is perspective. Uh we're just going to present some varying standpoints regarding uh procedure. Uh the third is going to be policy. Uh we're just going
to provide some input uh for guideline implementation and really just kind of inform some some policym. And then the last one is just going to be that that kind of idea of a dialogue. uh you know kind of put our entry into what should be uh an open uh and healthy uh discussion around this topic. So uh with
that I will pass along to my colleague. Hi my name is Marcus and I'm a freshman at RHS. Today I'm here to talk about the student usage of AI from my perspective. In my first few months at the high school, I have found myself using AI very often to assist my studying. It is
a very effective tool for giving me summarized study guides on important details, especially in content heavy classes such as history. In addition, it helps me with quiz preparation as it can generate various practice questions, especially in classes like English or
Spanish. And in my recent Romeo and Juliet unit, I have definitely been using it a lot as it help me helps me eval. I can even type in sample answers to AI to get valuable feedback late at night at at a time where a teacher wouldn't be able to reach me right away.
Another critical aspect of AI from my personal experience is a memorization aspect of it. For example, in my biology class, AI has helped me make acronyms for various related concepts with long and difficult to remember words. For
example, for example, this week as we have been memorizing the organism classes which goes kingdom, film, class, order, family, genus, and species, AI has helped me memorize it as keep ponds clean or fish get sick. Much easier,
right? Similarly, in history of the modern world, AI has helped me generate timelines or a series of chronological events with different periods of time like World War II where certainly many processes happened in a very short period of time. Finally, AI has helped
me a lot with memorizing complex step-by-step processes in hard classes like science, math, and economics where I can easily ask AI for a detailed but simple rundown of each separate step. Hi, I'm Jan and I'm a sophomore. As
Marcus has said, AI can be a valuable resource for students. So, I'm also going to be speaking about student usage of AI. I found that when I miss class and I'm not able to attend office hours, AI can be a great tool to fill in the gaps of my understanding. I can plug class notes into AI and have it explain
them in more detail, allowing me to ask questions about specific parts of material that are challenging. Additionally, if a student is in class but is still struggling with certain concepts, AI can help clarify that material. Students can plug in specific questions or ask AI for a more comprehensive review of the
lesson. In my personal experience, when student when studying for history exams that cover vast time periods, I've asked AI to turn my notes into a detailed story to enhance my comprehension. AI has also been useful in chemistry, helping me when I'm stuck
on a difficult problem. It can also grade my practice problems, explaining what I got wrong, and even generate additional problems based on worksheets from class. Overall, AI is a tool that allows students to build or reinforce their understanding of coursework, even
when they're not in the classroom. Hi. So, we're going to explain how we've experienced and seen AI teachers use AI in the classroom. I'm Mila Crane. And I'm Joshua Jung. And we're going to explain our experience from Latin class. All right. Hi, I'm a freshman at uh
Rididgewood High School. And to start within my Latin class, our teacher, Miss Chiganti, uses chat GBT, a well-known AI website to create a sequence of testlike questions that we answer and receive feedback from on the AI site. To do this, Miss Gante provides a prompt that
we copy and paste into chat GBT. These prompts could include basic language or translation help but can go to the extent of more complex clause and case practices providing a great range of skill help for students. Furthermore, other AI websites allow for prompts that
create images. Uh this has helped me greatly as I am a visual learner and it helps me see uh difficult and hard to understand sentences in a more optical manner. And as a result, AI platforms provide teachers with an effective tool that they can use for a wide variety of
topics and needs, subsequently helping further a student's understanding of a topic through language help and visual learning. In addition to all the points Josh just made, I've experienced my Latin teacher utilize AI in the classroom to provide support for when she's not present, as well as she
encourages students to use AI to pre pre-grade assignments for some cases. For example, my Latin teacher was out a few weeks ago, and her absent work she assigned us was to translate a passage in Latin and then input it into an AI website called Boost, which would pre-grade it before we hand it into her.
The AI website did not immediately grade it or provide just the answers, but it targeted areas that made grammatical or word choice errors and encouraged me to fix them. This helped me tremendously as I was able to have a productive learning day even when she was not physically
present. as well as providing instruction for when a teacher is absent. AI can also help student after school hours. If you have a question after 3:30 p.m. and our teacher is not able to look at her email or respond right away, she recommends certain AI websites to use to help us figure out
our questions faster with an immediate response. Her goal is to teach students how to use AI responsibly and develop good technological skills. Hi, I'm Ariadna. And in addition to how Ma's Latin teacher utilizes AI, it can also be used in history, um, my history
teacher uses it by allowing us to use it for practice tests or studying and can give us inspiration on ideas for projects or assignments. Additionally, if we have a project that involves creativity, but we are not great on it, AI can be used to generate images and scripts for these projects if permission
is granted by the teacher. Hi, I'm Alex Van Kempen and I'm a senior at the high school and I'm here with Ian to discuss some of the advantages we've seen of AI. Our first one individualization of using AI. We've come to consensus that students have
very unique ways of learning if that's from you know textbased learning, visualization learning or even audio based learning and not every teacher is going to have the ability to make individual lessons for individual students. So what we've come to understand and just seeing how certain AI models use it, we can see that some
students and some AI models can work together very collaboratively. Whereas teacher could have a really rough basis draft and then students could plug it into certain AI and then give that student uh an assignment or an assessment in the way that they can learn best which then allows students to
learn in the most productive way. Make sure they don't fall behind from very generic uh generic learning model. The second one is availability. We've come to understand that at Rididgewood, our motto is a tradition of excellence. And that motto is not only in the education of our school, but also
in our sports programs and our clubs. And we come to understand that a lot of sports and clubs have times where they won't be in school, they have to leave school early. For instance, I'm a student and I also am a pro a dual athlete. I do swimming and tennis. And throughout my four years at the high school, I've had many moments where I have to leave school really early. If
that's early as 2 p.m. or even early, like maybe midday or just miss entirely because of tournaments or certain competitions. And I've had instances where I've fallen behind because I can't go to period 9 or after school hour system because I'm just not I'm not in anymore. I'm in Hackinack or I'm in Tina
because I'm competing in a different town. So for instance, this year I had a swim meet this year and we had it in Hackinack. And unfortunately since we were in Hackinack, I couldn't go period 9 because I was in Hackinack and we had a quiz next day in math on the product tool. So instead of having to like hope
that I understood the topic and just really pray that I had a good score, I uh I asked an AI model just to explain to me what the product rule is, give me some example questions, and then I was able just to practice doing that, continue doing that, and I actually really want my exam. So I think that AI
is a really good availability tool because it's just 247. It can be you don't have to always have a teacher. Yes, your teacher is always going to be a great model, but let's say you're up at 12:00 p.m. and you need to study. It's just there to help you make sure you understand. One of the other benefits of using AI is
it being instantaneous. It gives immediate feedback in real time that reduces the time between action and correction. AI is also extremely useful when you are in a time crunch. Like Alex explained, one time I've used it personally was back in sophomore year
when I had the flu and a 105 degree fever. I had a reading check quiz the next day, but I didn't read the five chapters. So, I used AI to summarize the five chapters in depth and thoroughly, and I did fine on the quiz. Another main
benefit of AI is its ability to act as an assessment tool. Although it isn't the best at creating study guides on its own if you simply give it your own study guide and create ask it to create bet questions based on your study guide. It acts as an amazing tool for testing your
knowledge based on your own notes. I've used this for quizzing myself on vocabulary tests where it would give me a word bank and sentences for me to fill in the blank which not only tests how proficient I am in understanding a word's use but also its definition and
how it fits into a sentence. Hi, I'm Eli Delator and I'm a sophomore. While there are clear benefits to incorporating AI into education, it is important to acknowledge and consider the drawbacks that come with this new technology. The first and most obvious drawback of AI is
cheating. There's already widespread cheating with AI, and this will only worsen as the technology continues to improve. Additionally, AI detectors are unreliable, causing AI content to be overlooked or causing student content to be flagged, leading to mistrust between
students and their teachers. It is however important to remember that while AI does facilitate cheating in new ways, there will always be cheating with or without AI. And just because AI can be used for unethical things does not mean that it is inherently unethical
itself. The second major concern is the loss of critical thinking skills. While many students correctly understand that having AI write an essay for them is cheating, far are fewer that realize that having AI write the thesis of the essay is also cheating. The critical
thinking skills that go into the essay are just as important as the writing itself and we must make sure that neither are lost to AI. Unfortunately, this is harder to police as there is no AI idea detector like there is with AI text detection. making uh making a best
solution a student working with their teacher throughout the entire writing process. The final drawback of AI is the lack of reliability in the results. Students and teachers alike must understand that AI regularly provides false or misleading information. And while AI is beginning to be able to site
sources, these citations are also misleading or incorrect a lot of the time. Furthermore, AI is not trained on scholarly sources that are behind pay walls, leading to less sophisticated results in the answers. Overall, understanding both AI's real world
benefits and its drawbacks is crucial in creating an understanding. Hi, I'm Lucas and I'm a freshman at the Ridgard High School. Currently, the Rididgewood High School's policy on AI states that AI should not be used unless instructed further by a teacher. There is no change in the rule
based on course or department, and the rules in each class are set based on the discretion of each teacher. Currently, some of my teachers, like my business teacher, Mrs. Menddees, are trying to implement a strategy called the traffic light system. Red means the assignment should not be done using any AI. Yellow means
there will be certain aspects where the student can use AI like generating images or getting a better understanding of a topic and green means the student can use any AI they want. With this system, the teacher should be telling the students how they want each assignment
done. And I think this is a very effective system because I find AI very helpful. But if teachers don't talk about AI, then it feels wrong to use it. Along with this system, I think it should be a green light first policy so students can use AI freely until the teacher says something limiting it. So
students can learn to use AI to benefit themselves instead of seeing it as bad. All right. So just uh in continuing talking a little bit about policy, there are some potential policy flaws that we wanted to address. Uh the first of which is going to be uh disagreements uh particularly among teachers between
departments uh departments excuse me. Um when teachers uh in the same department disagree on how when where why AI should be used uh you know that can cause some issues and and maybe discrepancies uh among the classes. Uh you know if you have some classes with some teachers uh
you know more open to AI while others are more restricting uh that can kind of create an imbalance. Uh the second there is going to be teaching style. Uh, you know, I think that's very important, especially in a district like Ridgewood where we pride ourselves on on giving some freedoms to some of our teachers and that's part of what makes us so
great is that, you know, our teachers are allowed to kind of teach in their style and do what what they think is most effective. Uh, and so by having a departmentwide policy that could kind of infringe on that, interfere on that maybe a little bit. Um, and so we want to be cognizant of that of letting teachers still have their breathing room
to uh conduct the classroom. Uh, and then the last one is going to be equitability. Uh that's similar to the point I said before, you know, the imbalance between classes. Uh if you have, you know, a a course that's taught by two different teachers, uh you know, and one teacher is is very, you know,
open to AI, those those students are allowed to use study guides and and create, uh, you know, lesson plans and study tools that are more accustomed to how they best learn. And you have another teacher who's very restricting and won't let them do that. you know, you might start to find kind of an
imbalance there and maybe some inequity, uh, you know, whereas some students will have an advantage while others may be at a disadvantage. And then talked a little about, you know, regulating um, AI. One good way to do that is just using lock tabs. Uh, you know, when you're taking
an assessment, uh, you know, a Google, uh, test, for example, will lock out all your tabs. Uh, you can't be on any other sites while you're taking that test. And that's a very easy way to just make sure students aren't using AI when they're actually being assessed. Um, and then the other's AI and plagiarism checkers.
There's lots of uh sites that do this. Turn it in, which is a site used for submitting essays. Comes with an AI checker. It'll do it automatically. There's also uh GPT0 is another one that's, you know, there are flaws with these systems, but they get better and better every day. Uh, as does the AI.
Uh, but they're they're great tools for just detecting if the text was written by artificial intelligence. Uh the next is going to be testing in class and that's just a lot about uh you know doing work that's actually handwritten in the class right in front of the teacher. Um and so instead of being done
kind of online up to the students to kind of do what they wish you know when you're writing an essay you know paper and pen in the classroom obviously you're not going to be using AI to to make it. So just doing these kinds of graded things class discussions lots of things like that in class will prevent
students from being able to use AI on them. And the last one is AI workshops. And that's more about teaching students how to use AI, when to use AI, when it's appropriate. You know, when students are handed their Chromebooks, for example, they're taught kind of how to responsibly use the internet. And so I
think, you know, similar thing here with AI, students should be taught kind of when uh and how to properly use this this tool. Um so with that I would just like to uh leave you off with one last thought um which I think kind of summarizes a lot
of the points we've been making. Um, if you think back to years ago, uh, when calculators were kind of on the rise and they started to become, you know, much more powerful, uh, and kind of make their way into the classroom, there was a lot of fear that, um, by allowing
students to use calculators, they'd be losing a lot of their mathematical abilities and and it would ultimately kind of hinder, uh, you know, their their skills as as learners and as students. Um but what we found in recent years is is really quite the opposite of that and that calculators are really
just a tool in the classroom that have accelerated and um enhanced the learning and and and really instead of kind of hindering it and and hurting it, it's really kind of broadened the scope of what students are able to do in the classroom and it's really just become a tool rather than um this kind of
overbearing infringement of their learning. Uh and so that's ultimately the future we envision for artificial intelligence. You know, if implemented properly, if its nuances are are kind of recognized and addressed, it's really going to be a tool that can help students learn better, help them learn
more effectively, uh you know, and really kind of accelerate and enhance that learning process. So, with that, I want to thank you guys so much for listening. Um I'd also like to give a shout out to our team here. Those are our leaders, both the outgoing uh and incoming student leaders. um our
presenters there who you just heard from um some other members who did some good work on this but uh could not be here tonight unfortunately and then the administrators who have kind of helped us and guided us along the way. Uh I'd also like to give a shout out to uh Dr. Schwarz and Miss Corass who uh have
helped out a lot too and making this uh look the best it could be and and kind of helping us get the the final product out. So uh with that I thank you for your time. Thank you for listening and uh I hope we can get this AI thing uh in the works. Let's go right away. keep the discussion going. So, thank you guys.
Well done. So, first of all, please don't go anywhere. Um because before you leave, we definitely want to get a group photo uh uh over here. Um we'd love to have that, but I'm sure some of our board members have a few questions or comments. So, so first of all,
everybody, great job. I mean, you really presented the the issue uh pretty comprehensively, so appreciate it. and uh and you really summed up I mean a lot of what a lot of leaders in education are thinking about and the challenges and opportunities. So I have a question for you all would love to kind of get a
few few opinions. Um obviously you showed the pros um right it helps with studying and summarizing and and just learning styles all that you know if you if you were Dr. Schwarz and you were in charge of the whole district and again not as students now, right? Put yourself
wear his hat and you were in charge of the district and you were trying to put a policy in place or a system, right, to kind of make it better for the future, right? Because the the negatives, you called out, the cons were cheating, right? If you're in the classroom and you can see the tabs or on your phone, um or the lack of being able to to think
on your own, right? If AI gives you uh the answers, you know, would you move to more of a policy of like kind of old school like pen and paper or at least lock tabs or maybe no Wi-Fi access during uh class assignments or exams and
kind of really force the students to because that's an idea that's out there, right, that people are discussing. Maybe we go back to a little bit more old school. You can't prevent people from accessing at home obviously or on their phones, but if you're eight hours in the classroom, maybe it's a little bit more old school, right? For sure. So, um, and
I I don't know if anyone else behind me wants to jump in on this at all, but, um, but for sure I think that, uh, things like impromptu, you know, right, like you said, pen and paper, kind of old school, um, if I was in that seat, I would recommend that classes do at least a few of those, even if it's one or two
every quarter, just so that teachers are kind of routinely checking in on on the writing that they know is from their students. And I think that's also just kind of a useful benchmark, right? because then at least you have that one that you know is written by the student. So if you give another one that's kind
of a take-home and it sounds totally different, you you might know something is up right then and there. Um but but I think it's just kind of about a healthy balance. Um you know I think we see AI most helpful as really more of a study tool and something to kind of just uh learn better from rather than you know
obviously supplement the learning. Um, so you know, I personally think that a balance of of like you said, things that are definitely kind of off limits to AI, like those pen and paper things and things that maybe you could use, you know, would be the best way to do that. Anyone want
I'll add on to that. I think we're in a state of, you know, AI is really um up and coming and we kind of have to embrace it, but we are still a school like we have to use critical thinking skills and we have to be able to write and read and all of those things. Um, so there's definitely a difference of using
it all the time versus using it for certain instances. And I think that um, even right now, like we're able to balance that, but there's still, you know, little um, nuances to fix here and there. Anyone else want to say anything about
that? Um, I think from my personal experience, especially in classes where we write papers like English or history, I think that we stress a lot our teachers, we they stress the writing process, which doesn't come like in a matter of 50 or
70 minutes in a single class period. And while I think that it would be certainly difficult to regulate the use of AI for take-home papers such as essays in English, I think that at some point like Harrison suggested, we should implement some types of inclass impromptu writing,
but also stress the importance of like week-long assignments which can really help you critically think about the topic like over time which wouldn't would possibly not come to you in a matter of 50 minutes, right? Sitting right there with a pen and paper in class.
So I think it was a great presentation and you guys covered a lot of pros and cons and u one um one of the bullet points I noticed was in the u negatives was reliability of the information and yes that was a very good point and I
just want to um add some more color to that that it when you guys are using AI um it's okay to um supply your content your textbook book, the PDF, the text that okay, this is the content that I
have now explain this part of it or using this create the acronyms or create abbreviations or explain more this one. But if you start using AI to and ask it questions that and rely on the information that's coming from AI that
is is not reliable that is that can be biased that can be incorrect that because a lot of the information that is is crawling or getting from the open source world may be biased and there are a lot of actors who are actually uh
feeding uh to make AI more biased especially when it comes to world affairs or history or those type of topics, you have to be critically like you have to validate your facts there instead of just relying on it because you can always your textbook is the is
the source. Your source of truth is your textbook or the information that is provided by a teacher. So you can take that text and tell the AI that hey this is the information and using this information please elaborate. But if you just ask it to just openly uh an
open-ended question you may have to cross check that. So reliability is is a very important factor there. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's honestly a perfect example of something that every student should be learning in something like an AI workshop or something like that. Like you know, like
you said, if you input your your sources first or your information first, like the textbook, that's a great way to eliminate a lot of those biases. And I think, you know, if it is a it's a stu it's a tool that ultimately students, you know, as as time goes on, it's going to be an inevitable tool that I think a
lot of students use. So I think informing them about, you know, tips and tricks like that and how to use it properly and responsibly uh is very important. So for sure, great job. Every one of you did a fantastic job. You're all so thoughtful
and articulate and um as someone who is still a little afraid of AI, I will admit it. Um, I appreciate that you are not and that you're encouraging me to go home and use some chat GPT tonight to see if I can learn how to use it and get get into the 21st century, but I um I
actually uh you reminded me of a of a conversation that we had. I know Mr. Ross is working on an AI policy in a committee and um when we worked on the strategic plan we tal and Harrison was in the committee with M Dr. Fenwick and Mr. Ross and myself and Jamie um and we
talked about AI a lot and you touched a little bit on this and I'd be interested to hear um some of your thoughts on you know AI is a tool but when you determine whether AI is appropriate or not the question is what is the authentic work right I think that was the word authentic or genuine work and I have to
I got to give you props there because Harrison that was your words those were your words but how would you define authentic work um and I know that's a lot, but if you have anything off the cuff that you'd like to share with us, I'd love to hear it. Yeah. Um, I will
I'll answer that one first. So, let them think about that for a minute. Uh, because we've talked about that before, like you said. Um, you know, I think authentic work is really just something that uh is generated by, you know, generated by the person first. And I I
think uh you know we've talked about this idea before and I'll bring it up again which is like you know AI is a tool that really can and should be used to generate lots of ideas and and and those types of things and and maybe you know pathways to explore but at the end
of the day it's really going to be the person and the the student in this case who is kind of curating those ideas and working with that tool and bringing it all together and and kind of forming the final product. Uh, and that's kind of where that the human piece of it comes into play and that's what really makes
it kind of their own work even if some things were generated by AI. Um, and I think that's again an important thing to learn is is like how to be the the curator of all these kinds of um AI outputs. Um, but if we're just talking about authentic work and how we define it when AI has been used, I think that's
that's kind of how I would think about it. Uh, anyone else want All right. So um when talking about like authentic work so for example if you were to write a research paper on let's say like climate change um so this
is this kind of has to do with Mr. Danny's point uh Donny's point as well. So um you can actually ask AI to site their source. Uh I know chat GBT like one of the main like AI source or websites like allow uh you to ask them to site their source and they will give
you their source. So I feel like if you use AI in a in a sense of like research gathering from sources that like you check by asking AI like where they got this information from, I feel as if that's still like honest work and that would still be like student creativity
that led to the final research paper, but the research done could be like gathered from AI. Um I think I have a personal example actually of how we've used AI in class. So just recently we had our AP exams to high school and I'm in CSP computer
science principles and just one way that the test works that we have to look at our code that we've written in February and write a couple sentences paragraphs about it. So, one thing my teacher has to do was she gave us a bunch of example questions and she made us write everything like about our code in those examples and she literally took all of
our answers put it into chat GPT put in our code and then the code the chat GPT gave us an exactly response but it was really weak compared to ours because one thing it didn't understand was how we actually use our code. So, I think when you think about chat GPT and what it gives us authentic work I think the big difference is when you think of a
student they understand how what they did and why they did it. the tattoo saying things like here's what I have. Here's the answer. Here's the solution. The student's going to be like, "Okay, I have a question. Here's here's my kind of like what I think I have to do, but also what I what I do to get here is another reason why I think it's
authentic work because the chat is almost like a math problem. We're thinking of like how did I get here?" And that's how we're going to include to our solution. And I think that's what that's the difference between what we did at the practice problems and what Chash did us because it gave us only like a really bare basic solution where instead like a lot of students you said
in the class were saying like oh well my code will do this because this will happen. It didn't say that because we knew how our code actually functioned. It just said here's the solution to the question you were looking for. Thank you. Yeah kind of adding on to your point.
Um, humans are so multifaceted and so creative. Um, and at the end of the day, AI is a robot and nothing can replace that. Um, so in my like so in my opinion like authentic work is something that like you put thought into um and used
all your like different dimensions of thinking versus one dimension of a robot. Okay. Yeah, I think good points there. Um any other feedback questions? Yeah. Uh oh, it's more of a comment than a question, but
um in this world where um in businesses, law firms, they're all arguing about a AI and of course there have been edicts down in law firms about you can't use AI to write your brief, you can't go into
court, and so you have this authentic work. But the fact is that you're going to go into a world as you after high school, college or or whatever your next step is that AI is going to be part of
your world. And so it is so great to see you questioning it, studying it, thinking about it, and also utilizing it, not being afraid of it, and understanding that it's a tool. Because that's the same conversation we had
in the district in the 90s when we were talking about should we have computers, do we bring in technology um we had that same conversation about as you said about um calculators. So you know that's ever changing and to be open
to the changes to understands the pros and cons are so important. So thank you for this presentation. It was very thoughtful and you know it just is another example of how wonderful the school district is in the high school in
terms of letting you rethink about what these issues are and um prepare you better for the future. So thank you for this. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you guys. We appreciate having such an engaged audience and uh and listening to our words and um we're happy you enjoy it
and you know like we said we hope the the conversation will continue. So, thank you so much. All right. So, if you can all stick around for just one minute, we just have a couple couple other things we want to do. So, uh so first of all, um Harrison Burns here is uh not only known to the
board because of his work uh with the principal committee. He also has served this last year as the as the board's student representative. Uh Harrison has been doing a really great job. Harrison, we appreciate your diligence and your conscientiousness. Um, and even the days where you can't be here, the few times
that you couldn't make it, you're very diligent to make sure you let us know and you've made every effort to be here, but you've been reliably here. You represent your peers very well, and I know the board is very appreciative of your of your service. So, we want to just recognize Harrison, but we also want to recognize we have uh we have
student representative and alternate representatives next year. uh your voice has been so well heard that we thought we would benefit in future years by having even more of you. So, we're going to have a few more members at the same time so that way we can benefit from the student voice. So, if you can all stick around for a second, we're going to
recognize Harrison and then we're going to recognize our new representatives and then we'll get pictures of everybody before you all go. Is that okay? Can you stick around for a minute? Great. Thank you so much. Okay. So, it's it's it's really a joy to
uh read this resolution of appreciation uh for Harrison. It is recommended that the board approve the following resolution of appreciation in honor of Harrison Burns. Whereas, Harrison has served as a student representative of
the board of education during the 2425 school year. And whereas it has been his responsibility to voice the student perspective to the board at their public meetings. And whereas Harrison has conducted himself with poise and
courtesy while listening attently attentively to discussions pertaining to the governance of the school district. And whereas Harrison has presented thoughtful and informative reports to the board of education on issues and
events at the high school. And whereas Harrison has held leadership positions, including serving as the president of the principal's advisory board, president of the French National Honor Society, captain of the varsity swim team, and co-editor and chief of the
high tide. And whereas Harrison has participated in various student organizations including the stock market club, the tutoring club, and brass ensemble. And whereas Harrison has gained valuable work experience as a
lifeguard, swim instructor, and swim team coach. And whereas Harrison is continuing his education at Cornell University, where he will be majoring in economics. And whereas Harrison is recognized and appreciated for his
genuine interest in the democratic process and his recognition of the importance of students as stakeholders in the district. And whereas Harrison's passion for this process elevated the role of the student representative on
the board. Therefore, be it resolved that the members of the Rigid Board of Education express their gratitude and appreciation to Harrison Burns for his service to the student body and the board of education and extend him their
best wishes for success in all future endeavors. And be it further resolved that this resolution be entered into the official minutes of the board of education meeting held on the 19th day of May,
2025. But thank you very much. Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you so much. And Mr. Mr. Murphy, did you want to introduce our new uh our our new uh our new board uh board representatives? And I Dr. Fenwick as well. I know you both were
involved in the process. Yes, it was great. We got to meet with our um new student representatives for the 2025 2026 school year. So, they're all here tonight. Myself and Dr. Fenwick had a had a great meeting with them kicking it off. We're really excited to
have them this year. So, I'd love to welcome Violet Batley, Eli Delator, Arav Matavala, and Grace Kim as student representatives joining the board next school year. Please stand.
If you guys would like to say anything, please feel free. Thank you. Thank you guys. Great opportunity. We're all really excited. And I'm so excited. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I think I think what Miss Murphy and I
liked the most about meeting you all, which was a lot, um, was that you planned on not only we were talking about like, all right, well, what would the rotation look like? You know, do we want to have two people at the desk, one person at the desk, and that you were all committed to be there for one
another? And that just spoke volumes to the spirit and the process and and um your will. And so Harrison that it takes four people to do what you were doing. Um you know I know that they're going to also shine but also thank you to you.
All right great. So uh Miss Broen if it suits if it if it fits the board's wishes what I'd like to do is uh let's get some pictures and everything of all of our board me of all of our students here and then uh and then we can proceed with the rest of the meeting. Oh I'm sorry. Miss Malli do you want something?
So, I have a walk-in um resolution. Uh I'm sorry, Miss Broen, but we didn't tell you about this in advance, but um I'm going to read a resolution into the record um which commemorates our president, Sheila Broen's 30th year as serving on the board of education, which
is quite a feat. So, um I'll read it into the record and then we'll make a motion. It is recommended that the board approve the following resolution in honor of President Sheila Broen. Whereas Sheila Broen was elected to the position of trustee of the Ridgewood Board of Education in
1995. And whereas Miss Broen has been continuously reelected and served the Rididgewood public schools as a trustee without interruption since that time. And whereas Miss Broken has also served as president of the Ridgewood Board of Education multiple times throughout her
career as a trustee, including 2025, her 30th year. And whereas Miss Broen has served the Rididgewood public schools in a volunteer capacity before her election to the board of education, including as president of the Treval and Elementary Home and School Association and as
president of the Federated Home and School Association. And whereas Miss Broen has served the community of Ridgewood for more than 40 years in other capacities too numerous to list. I tried. And whereas it is recognized that Ms. Broen has demonstrated a remarkable
commitment to public service, in particular to the Rididgewood public schools. Therefore, be it resolved that the members of the Rididgewood Board of Education seek to recognize Miss Broen for her 30 years of service to the Rididgewood public schools and to express our gratitude and appreciation
for the time and energy she has devoted to the RPS community and the village of Rididgewood. and be it further resolved that this resolution be entered into the official minutes of the board of education meeting held on the 19th day of May 2025. I would move that here. I will
hand this to you and I would move that. Second. I'll second. I Thank you. Uh, this starts my 30th year. 99 1996. That's all right. Don't but it but I'm being rec.
Yes, it's 30 years, but it starts 1996. So, it's that year they're counting this year. And it's it's I was going off the uh Bergen County school boards. Yeah. Anyway, is that what they said? Yeah. 30 years. Okay. Well, any
maybe not. Who's pounding? It's a long time. It's a long time. Goodness. Yeah. Anyways, thank you very much. Wow. Fantastic. All right. So, if we could get started with the principal advisory group, you guys want to come on up here?
We'll get a nice picture with everybody. That's So, I think we're just going to take a minute. Yeah. Harrison, are are you do you have to leave? Oh, okay. We're just waiting for
Dr. Shores to come back. Yeah. That's great. They look different. And I think that their names change from sixth grade. Yeah. Yeah, they really do.
They're so talented. back uh to the meeting and Harrison um your reports. All right. Uh, so I have a little bit of a longer report today because I missed you guys last time. So, it's a little of a
combination. Uh, so not to frighten you guys. They're usually not this long. Uh, this is a little bit longer, but um, my last report, which is uh, kind of insane. It It flew by, I think. But, um, I will get right into it. Um, so around the school, uh, the RHS
percussion ensemble recently had a performance, uh, at the Necessary Noise Festival at Caldwell University, uh, which was at the end of March. Um, ASL classes attended an event where they got to meet a deaf UFC champion, uh, the Hammer. Uh the cyber security class
recently headed to Bergen Community College for a visit uh to their cy um the HOSA EMT team competed at the end of March and is headed to nationals um for becoming the first RHS wrestling champion since
1965. Francesca uh Guusva uh received a proclamation from the village of Rididgewood. Um, the Archess Bands concert took place in April featuring a showstopper 35minute piece uh performed by the Wind Ensemble. I was there. Uh, 35 minutes sounds like a lot and it is,
but uh, I was entertained the entire time. It was it was a very good piece. Um, the Latin academic team won the state competition, making them the New Jersey champs, and they're now eligible to compete in nationals. Uh, Ridgard Cambodia Club raised over $1,200 in the
TEM World Cup soccer tournament. Uh, two students competed in and won first place at a business competition hosted by Keen University. Uh, an RHS student finished fifth in the National Snowboarding Competition in Colorado for Slope Style.
Uh the RHS spring sports pep rally was uh on our last day before break, which was Friday, April 11th, uh which showcased all of our uh spring sports teams. Um on April 9th, RHS history students heard uh from second generation
Holocaust survivor uh Gerald Zachs on the story of his parents' experiences in multiple concentration camps during World War II. Um, RHS celebrated Take Your Kid to Work Day with over 40 children in attendance uh with their parents to be spotted uh by students throughout the day, which is kind of
fun. Um, the Maroon and White Series wrapped up for the school year on April 10th with its final its final, excuse me, performing and visual arts showcase. Uh, let's see. Uh, Rididgewood took home 78 total awards at the NJ
Junior Classical League Convention on Saturday, April 5th. Um, career pathways and medicine classes were recently visited by professional occupational therapists from New York. Uh, the green club visited the climate awareness grant culminating event at the Medallands Environmental Center in
Lindhurst to give presentations on the benefits of installing Wildflower Meadows over traditional lawns. Uh, on April 23rd, six RHS students headed to Ramo College for an equity think tank with eight other Bergen County schools in attendance. Uh they tackled equity
related issues from their home schools and presented actionable solutions. Um someone here was there actually. Um RHS recently awarded 11 students with maroon awards at a ceremony on May 2nd. The award is meant to recognize students for going above
and beyond in all of their commitments. Next page. Um, in the tune with the rise of ASL, the first annual ASL song showcase took place recently at RHS where students performed a song they researched of their choice in sign language. The RHS Learning Commons is
celebrating Asian-American Pacific Islander Heritage Month with themed displays and relevant books. Freshman Katherine Shin advanced to National History Day National Contest um in a recent competition. Uh with the college down payment deadline uh you know
happening this past uh Thursday, May 1st, uh all seniors have officially committed to their colleges. So congrats to all those guys for getting that process done. Uh the twoe stretch of AP exams just finished up. Uh it went from Monday, May 5th to this past uh Friday
the 16th. Uh so congrats on all those AP students for getting done with their coursework. Um this week there's state testing for freshmen um for all four days that we have this week and juniors will be state testing uh these first two days of the week. Um so all of the
students in the building go in two hours later. Nice delayed opening which is fantastic as a senior. I got to say I'm enjoying that very much. Um, Friday of next week, uh, or sorry, Friday of this week and Monday of the following, uh, will be off for Memorial Day. RHS will recognize the arts in its
annual celebration of the arts this Thursday, the 22nd. Uh, seniors have a ton of end of year activities coming up, including uh, prom, which is on Friday, May 30th, uh, which is followed by the the prom house beach tradition, where a lot of the seniors will go rent a beach
on LBI uh, and hang with friends for the weekend. Um, college t-shirt day is on Thursday, June 5th. Uh, senior day, which includes a sunrise breakfast, grad games, and senior yearbook distribution and signing. Um, which is the following
day or the day before actually on Wednesday. Um, the senior award ceremony will be on Tuesday, June 10th, and graduation uh, which will be followed by dinner, dance, project, graduation, etc. Uh, will be on Thursday, June 19th. Uh
finals will begin Friday, June 13th. Uh which continue on the following Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, those through to the 18th. Uh and the last day of classes will be Thursday, June 19th. Um RHS students are getting ready for summer with a lot of summer activity preparations coming up. You know, lots
of jobs and camps and uh workshops and tons of ways for students to get involved and stay active over the summer. A lot of which the processes of are happening now. Um, and then we move over to sports and activities. The RHS literary magazine recently released its
second uh edition for spring of 2025, which you can find linked on the weekly view. Uh, the Unified Sports Club recently held a summer themed semi-formal dance in the campus center. Uh, the Alps Outdoor Club recently had a Stony Creek Farm trip uh, and a
whitewater rafting trip. So, that's pretty cool. Uh the French National Honor Society is heading to Somerville Elementary uh in a couple days, Wednesday the 21st to talk to students there about learning about French language and culture in Rididgewood. Um Project Interact
recently made a $5,000 donation in honor of Mr. Bazudo meant to be put towards the Little Theater renovations. Uh they've also been involved in numerous activities recently including service for the Rididgewood Arts Foundation, uh Eastern in the Park, Rididgewood Film
Festival, the Daffodil Festival, and a food drive at Stop and Shop. Uh from April 25th to the 30th, 50 RHS students attended DECA's International Career Development Conference in Orlando. Um our students notable successes across various business topics include three
top 20 finishes and a roleplay award. Uh the golf team headed down to Ocean City, Maryland for competition over spring break. Uh freshman Kate Harrenstein earned gold, finishing first place in the all-around at the USA Gymnastics level 9 regional championships in Virginia Beach. Uh the small ensembles
concert happened in the campus center on Thursday, May 1st. The Sharing the Arts spring performance was on Monday the 12th. Uh there's an ac capella concert on June 4th, a spring dance concert on June 8th. Uh the RHS choir car wash happened on Sunday the 4th. Uh the RHS
band car wash happened just a couple days ago, Saturday the 17th. Uh the RHS choir and orchestra concert is tomorrow uh the 20th 7:30 at Westside Presbyterian. Uh the band concert is outside at the Shell at Vets and that's
going to be on Thursday, June 5th. Uh Jazz in the Wood at the Brick House was this past Friday the 16th. The choir award ceremony will be on Thursday the 29th. Uh the new players put on their production of Much to Do About Nothing recently um from Thursday the 8th to
Saturday the 10th. Um I went and saw that. It was very good. They do a good job there. It's kind of a riff on um the Shakespeare and it's uh but they make it understandable and fun and it's it's cool to see the students get involved and and get excited about that. Uh the ac cappellas recently took home
first in the international competition, international championship of high school uh ac capella mid-Atlantic semi-finals. This means they advanced to finals in competition uh in NYC, which has happened already. Uh and they were the Mid-Atlantic champions out of 47 groups with a stellar performance. So
shout out to them. Congrats to them. Uh, Rich's own Johnny Jackson was recently on an episode of George to the Rescue on NBC about his incredible story and journey uh, tackling cancer as he uh, as he was a basketball legend here as well. Uh, the crew team took home 14
medals across two weekend competitions at the end of April. Um, and I'll just do a quick run through of all the all the sports to to give you updated. Um, the baseball team is 12 and six. uh should note that uh their coach Kurt Hullman uh set the Bergen County record
for most wins with his 631st win. So that's pretty cool. Our softball team is 8-8. Boys lacrosse is 8 and5. Girls lacrosse is 9 and5 and they're also the Bergen County champs. Um boys golf is 7-5 and girls golf is 13-1. Boys tennis
is 10-0 and they are state sectional champions. And uh flag football is 8 and0 and uh the boys track team also is our state sectional champions this year. So a lot of good success over the sports teams here. Um and one more thing which is not
oh and um the national honor societies for languages recently had their induction ceremony. That was a couple weeks ago. I'm forgetting the May 7th I believe is when that was. Um, so all the students across all the languages who were being inducted into their honor societies uh came together for that
ceremony. A pretty nice event. Um, so that's all I have for you. Um, before I sign off for the last time, I just wanted to say uh my thanks to all of you. Um, it has been an immense pleasure to get to to work with all of you and get to know all of you. I'm very
grateful for my experience here and and and and having this role, getting to represent my peers and um you know, you you've all been so helpful, so supportive, and I just want to say from the bottom of my heart how thankful I am for that um and how amazing it's been to
be here. So um you know, look forward to seeing what happens in the future and and and passing the passing the torch. I'm sure they'll do amazing uh work. Uh but I just want to say for me, you know, thank you all of you. Um, I I I'm very appreciative and uh it's it's been a
blast. So, thank you for that. Uh, I will yield the floor. Thank you. Wow, there's a lot happening at the high school. Yeah, don't be nervous. Thank you very much. All right. Um, I will open the floor uh comments
from the public. Please um state your name and uh your municipality. Um please keep your uh comments to uh four minutes or less.
Um good evening Ann loving Ridgewood New Jersey. A couple things from tonight's meeting before I say what I wanted to come here for. First is um I'm really was really
aed by the impress by the uh presentation on AI. It was fantastic. It was very informative and so well done. Students are fantastic. I would also like to say that it's wonderful that you now are going to have four student reps and I'm happy to see that there's
diversity among the reps because in the last few years there hasn't been diversity at all. One other thing, um, board president Broen mentioned that in the 90s you were debating whether or not to have computers. Actually, um, my
daughter started school at Haw in 1986 and they had computers already. They had, uh, writing to read in the classroom and so they did have computers in 1986 at least on some level. Okay. The reason I came here is I
wanted to read something to you. This is from a second grade teacher who's been teaching second grade for I think 19 years at a private school in Hoboken and it's about a teacher from Haw uh who is retired but still very
much alive. His name was is Terry Dunn and this is called Lessons from Mr. Dunn. Why I teach today when I stepped into Mr. Dunn's second grade classroom I had no idea it would chart the course of my future. His class wasn't just a place
where we learned. It was where education transformed into adventure, where textbooks became launchpads for imagination. The turning point came during our space unit. While other teachers might have been content with worksheets and videos, Mr. Dunn believed
learning should be experienced. After weeks of studying planets, rockets, and astronauts, he announced space week. Words that still make me smile decades later. This, by the way, was in 1988. The ordinary school gym became our
mission control. Mr. Dunn had transformed it into a space station complete with control panels made from cardboard boxes covered in buttons, switches, and dials. We arrived to find our space suits waiting. Jumpsuits with
homemade NASA patches that he stayed up late sewing himself. Our mission wasn't just play. It was a carefully designed assessment. Each challenge required us to apply what we'd learned. Calculating fuel needs based on weight and distance,
identifying celestial bodies, or solving unexpected problems like oxygen shortages. I remember the pride in solving these puzzles, proving we weren't just memorizing facts, but truly understanding them. That week changed
everything for me. I realized teaching could be magical. That learning comes alive when students can touch, experience, and embody knowledge. Today, as a second grade teacher myself, I've created my own milestone projects
inspired by Mr. Dunn's approach. Our USA Postcard Challenge connects students with the entire country through real correspondence. Our NYC Hoboken project turns engineering concepts into tangible experiences as we build bridges and
ultimately walk across the Brooklyn Bridge together. When I see my students eyes light up during these projects, I'm transported back to that school gym during turned into a space station. In those moments, I know Mr. Dun's legacy
lives on, not just in me, but in every student whose education I've been privileged to transform into adventure. So, I know you often honor teachers that are currently retiring. And Mr. Dunn has been retired for a number of years. I
don't know the number. Um, but anyway, I just wanted to uh to read this to you because I thought it's just lovely and it speaks to the wonderful experience at Hall School, which I know I think that the space week has has improved
astronomically, not to no pun intended, but it was really something even then in 1988. And if I may, I'd like to give this to Dr. Of course. Of course. Thank you. Hi, I'm Carolyn Holt, a Ridgwood
resident. Um, 30 years. I'm so It couldn't go without being recognized not only by your board, but by parents. And as the president of Federated Homeman School Association, um Sheila, we just
want to thank you for everything you've done listening to Harrison's update. It's amazing what this district does and it's all because of people like you who give of their time. Um as well as all of our great um teachers and students and
parents. So, thank you. Um and if it's okay with you, I'd like to give you some flowers. I I won't thank you. Okay. Thank you, Miss Hall. Thank you.
Okay. No one else from there. James, you're James, you're on with the boards. Uh, yes. My name is James Janikat. I am a resident of East Shutherford and I have a question on board resolution
uh D3B which is located on page nine of your agenda. What is your question? Uh yes. Uh you're hiring for a uh new director of guidance. Is this someone from within your district or is this someone you're
bringing in from outside the district? Oh, well, you know, um, usually we we'll take the comments and then if we can answer your question, we will. Otherwise, we'll get back to you. So, your question is on page 9 3B, right? Yes. Resolution D3B. Okay.
All right. We'll we will answer your question at the end of uh the Yeah. End of public comment or we can answer it now. Jamie, we're I just like to stick to practice here.
Yeah. Okay. If the speaker has some point he'd like to make then we can take that in consideration also. Is that is that the only thing you wanted to say? Well, before I make my comment, I want to make sure I'm talking about the right person. um like where is this person coming from? Like what is
their current job title when you're hiring them to your district? I I don't think we we can't discuss personnel, right? No. Okay. Well, then um well then I'll just say that I currently work with a Jennifer Perry. Uh I'm a teacher at
Indian Hills High School. Um there's a Jennifer Perry who's the uh a supervisor of guidance at the Raro Indian Hills Regional District. And uh I just want to say I urge the board to uh table this motion regarding her because I find it
hard to believe she's the most qualified uh person for the job. Uh in my dealings with her as a teacher at Indian Hills, I have found her to be uh condescending to uh I don't think faculty members. I can't I can't we do that. I'm I'm sorry.
Um you can go on. I'm sorry. Uh yes. Yes, I like I said my interactions with her I found her to be uh you know condescending to the faculty uh when she ran the PSATs uh faculty members who had questions about the process uh were talked down to and as
director of guidance she's the liaison between uh guidance counselors the students and the uh and colleges you know trying to get you know for for students trying to get into college and you really need someone in that position who's more of a people person and who
understands the public face of that job. And during her time at Railo Indian Hills, she has shown herself to not be up to that task. So, I would urge the board to table this for now and have the administrators in charge really dig deep
into uh how she did at Ramo Indian Hills and uh perhaps reconsider uh hiring her and uh perhaps reopening the process because if this is the same person and if it's not obviously um you know you could feel free to ignore my comments but it's the Jennifer Perry who's
currently a rampo Indian hills he really is not suitable for a position of director of guidance in a district as well regarded as yours. That's it for my comments. Thank you. Okay.
Um Mr. Loving maybe Mrs. Loving was here. You're on with the board. Uh good evening. Yes, it is Mr. Loving a boy a loving Rididgewood taxpayer. Uh I would like to echo Miss Loving's comments and
say that I was very pleased to see that there is some diversity among the new student representatives. Uh congratulations to them all and welcome aboard. Uh as you might recall, I had a couple of questions during the public hearing on the budget. Two of which were
not able to be answered during the meeting itself. Uh Mr. Matthews was kind enough to answer one of those questions in an email and that was about an expense associated with a purchase of bottled water that was build to the
admin center. He uh kindly informed me that he had authorized that purchase and it was to have water on hand in the event of a a future water emergency. So, I thank him for getting back to me about that. Uh the other question I had concerned
purchases of water cooler water at uh three of the elementary schools and that question uh I needed to file an OPER request in order to get an answer for that and the business office did get back to me and the answer was that at
the Glenn school the purchase of water for a water cooler in the nurse's office is required by uh state law uh because some reason. I don't know. Special education, I guess, is is what's going on over there. So, that purchase is
required. However, at Orchard and Ridge schools, apparently, the purchase of bottled water, water cooler water at those locations was not authorized, and the business officers informed me that the practice has been stopped as of the
end of the 2025 year. Uh my concern is that somehow or another that those two purchases or purchases made by those two schools had been going on for a while unchecked and I'm concerned that that didn't pop up in an
audit. And I'd like to understand further why that wasn't caught in an audit and what else may be going on in terms of unauthorized purchases in the system that have not been caught in any audit. So, if somebody could explain what is
being done now that we've discovered that some unauthorized purchases were taking place apparently for years. Uh, they were small amounts of money, but what else is being purchased and is not being caught in an audit that shouldn't
be purchased? Thank you very much. Thank you. Seeing no other hands raised, uh no one else from the uh here at the ed center. Um we'll close public comment. We do have another comment at the end of the
uh evening. Um and we'll go to um district goals presentation uh Dr. Schwarz and that will probably roll into your superintendent report as well or Sure. Could I have a chance to respond to just some of the comments real quick? Yes, sure. So, first of all, I
appreciate Miss Loving joining us and sharing uh that information about some of the history. I actually wasn't aware of the origins full origin story of the Hall Space Week, but if you haven't been a part of Haw Space Week, uh it's a it's a pretty cool thing. Um I've been actually wasn't able to get there in person last year and I understood I
missed a lot. So, um it's a great it's a it's a part of Haw culture. So, thanks for that background. Um, also thank you for Miss Holt for joining us. Uh, with respect to the gentleman who came to make comment about an individual that's on our agenda. Just as a general commentary, it's important to note that
public comment is not something that can be abrided. The board is not responsible or liable for things that are said in public comment and individuals are individually responsible for the comments that they make in public comment. Um, and they're respons they assume all li all legal liabilities accordingly. Um to be clear and speak generally for all of our candidates that
we recommend. We do conduct thorough background searches. We have a very rigorous process. Very happy to continue with the recommendations of the candidates that we have and full confidence that we've done our due diligence. Um and then as far as Mr. Loving is concerned, uh we'll certainly try to respond to those questions. I'm
sorry we didn't get a complete response to you regarding the water cooler issues, but uh we certainly would uh certainly will we'll circle back and make sure that you get a full response on that. Um on that one, Dr. Schwarz, what I can I just clarify what is the state law that would be different for
Glenn versus other elementary schools that I I I don't I don't know. I'd have to I have to look into the matter more. I'm not sure what he's referring to. Okay. Because if if we are going to discontinue it from two schools, but if you're still going to continue it for Glenn, uh I would like to understand why
like what differentiates Glenn. Sure. Yeah. I don't have an answer to that right now. Thank you. Would you like me to proceed then with our Yes. Okay. All right. Bear with us here. We're going to transition here and pull presentation up on the screen. Um, as
far as a superintendent report, I'll kind of do them in reverse order. My report, my superintendent report is largely going to be addressed in the district goal report. Um, but I would like to use my superintendent report little window here to just bring to people's mind uh make sure that they're aware Thank you so much. um make sure that they're aware uh that we've got a
lot going on. And in addition to the district goals report, we're going to have this the state of the schools address that's going to take place coming up on June 2nd. So in so if you like this kind of stuff and you want to hear more, come on out. We got a lot of slides and a lot of good data. I want to
also thank everybody who took play took part in our uh surveys. Uh that was we we got we had even higher rates of return this year than in prior years. So, uh, thank you, Miss Corless, who was very diligent about putting together a communication plan to get that out.
We've got great responses. Um, we're c we, uh, Miss Corless led a really nice committee that also vetted uh, the experience of the surveys last year. So, we have to do a little bit of work in crosswalking last year's surveys to this year. Some of the feedback we from the community is that people felt like they really needed a neutral category. Last
year, we forced them to choose whether they agreed or disagreed. People felt like there was a lot of things that they just don't know about. So for community we added that and we have to kind of crosswalk that because we want to be able to establish a trend analysis for our staff and our students we put them with with requiring them to
choose because they're here and they have opinions about those things. Sometimes the neutral category can be very hard to decipher year overyear. So um but nevertheless we have really great data. We're digging into it. We're really enjoying that process. I want to commend all of our administrators
especially who are a part of our district goal process. There's been a tremendous amount of work for the state of the schools uh and data analysis and we'll get to that and I'll give thanks for that later. But right now tonight, what we're going to share is really shouldn't be news to anybody. We've been talking about these things all year
round and we just a few months ago did a did a an intram update, but as part of our end of year processes, giving a final report on the goals is a is a part of what we need to do. So, uh I'm going to go through this. we have our leads for each of our district goal groups and they'll get a chance to kind of share uh
share about each goal and then I can of course wrap that up. Uh board members if along the way as we're talking about these if you see anything that needs to be clarified or requires or maybe we're missing something or if you have any questions please let us know. Anybody who's with us right now uh participating
from home um I believe Miss Corus did we were we able to post the uh the presentation? Yeah, I just shared it with you if you'd like to put that up there. So, if people want to follow and see links and all that, um, we'll be putting that up there shortly. So, it's not up right now, but it will be up before too long.
Okay. All right. So, I'll be uh I'll drive on my my laptop here. Um, but I thought that um our first goal is going to be is uh pertains to our strategic planning process. And since our strategic
planning process is sort of like the beginning and the end of everything that we're do, the end of this year and the beginning of next year, um I'm going to let Dr. Fenwick talk about that because she was really in charge of our strategic planning goal. Um did a really nice job of liazing with our our um our
strategic planning consultants and uh and I'll while I get this set up, you can go ahead and and start introducing us to uh to your goals at work and the accomplishments you made this year. Thank you, Dr. Schwarz. Um so the today's presentation reviews the 2425
district goal report with particular focus on my behalf on goal one the vision 2030 strategic plan. Uh the administration is uh presenting comprehensive review of all the goals uh tonight but that one was the one that I
focused on. Um the team uh is reporting on outcomes from this highlighting the integration of various district initiatives. Um so district goal one vision strategic plan continued the strategic planning efforts that were first initiated in 2324 which was
engaging the stakeholders to develop a new five-year vision for implementation. uh during this uh next year. Um the administration established several key actions to measure progress including engaging with a consultant partner,
building a comprehensive strategic planning timeline and incorporating the spec the specific priorities within the plan. And these priorities reflected our commitment to the whole child education and included um articulating a uh
journey of a graduate um from uh Ridgewood High School, defining the role of AI and uh in student outcomes, updating our college admission and post high school advisement processes, uh addressing mental health needs in
students and staff, um exploring innovative uh curricular options, creating inclusive environments, and maintaining district properties. Uh the team uh systematically worked to integrate these planning outcomes into the state of the school address and
educate families through our communication channels. Awesome. I'm going to just jump in there. Thank you so much for that. You gave me a little time to pull my presentation up and that was a great intro to your goal. Um so this is the 2425 district goal report. Um our objectives we want to report on
the outcomes of the 2425 RPS district goals and we want to highlight the integration of various district initiatives. This is similar to the objective of last presentation but this now we're really actually bringing it all together here. So district goals strategic plan budget process state of the schools address our new annual
special education review aka the special education state of the schools and uh and our annual program evaluation processes. These are all now weaving together into one coherent district improvement initiative. Um, so we have some tables here. Uh, we're going to stick with this
format. It's familiar. Uh, and it's easy to work in in a slide deck. And this is really collaborative work. So that's helpful to us. So the blue I want to be clear. If we say something is established, that doesn't mean done. It means that it's well in place, up and running, and subject to continuous improvement. If it's if it's in process
then it's green that means that we are not quite up and fully running as continuous process. Um yellow means that it has begun but it really is just begun. Um anything in that orangey kind of color is not yet initialized and anything tabled is red. Um we do not
have anything in those two categories. So I did add to the presentation I know this is very small font but I did just add the goal language. We were a little we were we were a little overzealous with our goal language. I think uh Ben, I think that was because we just had so much that we wanted to accomplish. We wanted to memorialize all of our
ambitiousness in all of our ambition. Yeah, there you go. All of our ambition in in these goals. So, um so I included on here for reference um what we just included back in February as our uh as our midyear
update. You can see that we had a couple different categories. First we have uh we had engaging a consultant that was completed with building a strategic plan timeline that was in process incorporating priorities integrating outcomes in state of the schools and educating families about vision 2030. Those were all in process. So uh Dr.
Fenwick do you want to I know you kind of got started already but I'll if you want to just walk us through these couple of the highlights of these couple of slides. Sure. So now you'll see if you're looking uh more blue than green which is uh terrific and shows uh all of the effort and and good work of uh
people on on goal one. Uh the current status now uh at May 2025. We've completed the consultant engagement phase of the project. The strategic plan timeline is uh more established with a final plan uh being presented uh had
been presented April 7th. Um the critical step is now transitioning to these district goals. Um all identified priorities have been successfully incorporated into the vision 2030 plan including the journey of the graduate framework. The administration comp
continues to work on integrating the outcomes from the state of the school presentation scheduled for June 2nd uh which will include detailed timelines for action and connection into the 2526 school uh district goals. Uh the team implemented a comprehensive
communication strategy spanning July 24 through June 25 with branding and goal setting to be introduced during the state of the school event. Excellent question. Sure. Do you have a target date for draft 2526 plan? Sorry. Do you have a
target date that you're working towards for the draft first draft of 2526 district schools? 2526. I think that will be incorporated once we have state of the school. So we we need to get to the June 2nd 1. Yeah, we're going to set that timeline in the state of the school's address. Okay. So the state of
the school's address is going to refine because we're still in the process of doing that analysis. So we're going to kind of recalibrate what our points of focus and priorities are. Plus, we've been we're going to be we're evaluating uh staff member feedback with respect to professional development as well. So we
coming out of June by the end by the close of this school year, we'll have a coherent timeline for what that's what that'll look like. And I'd ideally like to have some draft goal language for the board to consider. That's why I'm asking because if the board needs to vote by September, ideally for the next school year, then we'll need the draft before
that. Yeah, I'd like to have draft language in June. Okay. Thank you. Okay. You you had you had three others. Did you want to Oh, I guess we talked about them, right? Um and and I'll just add on to this as well. I know Miss and actually I want to Miss Corass, I know you've been a big part of this as well.
Not sure if you have any comments that you want to add, but I know that a big priority is of course we have to now transition from having this plan to making this real for folks. So um the board did authorize the did approve the mission and vision statement and we've
asked our principles to start working with their teachers and to start like mulling what the language means and try to and so so more or less what I'm recommending here and we've already started is that we sort of treat this like a soft roll out initially introduce people to these ideas but we're at the
same time Miss Corass is leading a significant effort to uh to to create some branding around this uh and a campaign to make sure that folks are aware of it. So, as we're building into that, we also want it to be an iterative process. So, that way by the time it's fully branded and rolled out, it's something that the staff has had some
feedback on, has been able to to kind of chew on and and uh and and has ownership over as well as the rest of the community, but the staff will be integral in our ability to uh to to to uh have um coherence in our implementation. Yeah. I I wanted to understand um a
little bit of the process and the branding and what's involved in it. You know, I I I don't know if we can if you're prepared to talk about that um yet or if it's still a work in progress, but I just sort of wanted to get a feel for what that that is. So, I I would
start and Miss Corus feel free to jump in as you see fit. Okay. Um, if you think about our last strategic plan, if you look, we have we have a considerable amount of branding materials like we have some banners and we have some we have some logos um that that effectively, you know, that are
consistent and are represented consistently throughout the district. They've been represented on our website. We want to make sure that we have a consistent understanding of what this what the plan means for folks and what it what it what the values of the plan are, what the new mission and vision are. Um, but we want to make sure that
it's a thoughtful branding process much like the last process was quite thoughtful and when I first got here and I asked people rather you I met with all the different administrators and I met with some teachers and representatives from different groups and I would ask them about the plan and I was really the
last plan was really what the our our uh there were quite a few staff members and particularly administrators who were really bought into the last plan. They felt ownership over it and it was it meant something real to them. I'd like for this this was developed in an authentic way. I'd like to make sure that our our our that that it's it's
represented professionally and it feels real to folks. Miss Cos, do you want to add anything, please? Is that on? It is. Um yeah. So, one of the big things that came out from the engagement committee relative to the strategic plan and branding was the idea
of 12 isolated buildings versus one district. So, we wanted to be able to tie in the strategic planning branding, the logos and the and the goals and the purposes, also to tie it
into us being one district. Even though each school will still have its own identity, we wanted to tie it in better. So if you were even just I know logos are not brands, even though a lot of people think that's what brand is, but it is a part of it. But if so, if you just use logos as an example, um Ridge
Elementary School has a clip art raccoon and Willard has this beautifully drawn panther with a W. So we want to get everybody kind of on the same page as from a district perspective. Everyone will keep their own, but we'll kind of blend better together. and that will tie
into the mission, the vision, and the branding associated with the strategic planning. So, it just looks like a much more cohesive unit and something that everyone can relate to. So, if you're in uh Treval Elementary, you can still relate to what's going on at GW because
you've kind of seen the progression up and that ties in with the branding. So think of it this way that it's easier to follow a process when there's some imagery associated with it. So that's the plan and that's what we're starting. So we've started
with it's been at least three focus groups per school and including the district office here with anywhere from three to 15 people in each group. And that's kind of where we are now. So we just finished that up. We have one more to go. the BFMS staff one is this week
and then all of those focus groups are done. Um, and now we've tied in once you guys have approved the mission and stuff, we provided that and the strategic plan to them. So everything's going to be a very busy summer. I decided website was done last summer. We needed something big for this summer.
Thank you, Miss Corass. All right, so next we have district goal two. Mrs. Murphy was responsible for this goal with her team. Um this is a goal about empowering students with systems of support. Um and although we use the term systems of support for both academic purposes and for student well-being purposes, we did focus a considerable
amount with respect to this particular goal in the areas of uh student well-being um student emotional well-being feel uh priorities of inclusion, but we do include things such as gifted and talented as well. So I'm going to go ahead and uh just real quick cruise through what we had last time
around. Again, we saw some elements that were in process or initiated um in process and established and in process and initiated. And so I'll allow Mrs. Murphy to just jump in and share about uh these different goal the progress that's been made in these different
areas. So yes, of course, Dr. Schwarz. So um the first area, the university partnership. So we did um get to the end of our university partnership. We have received the audit results as I shared in February. um at this point uh you know we have shared them with the
strategic planning team uh specifically Mr. Ross and Dr. Fenwick as some of those results will impact um some of the work that's happening in strategic plan. Um I think that the information that was provided to us was not as necessarily useful as we thought it would be but we
will be still presenting out to um first the curriculum committee um in the near future to share what that information was. So there's value, but I think we thought it would be more than what it was coming back to us to um um and I
think that's just part of the the nature of these types of processes and not anything to do necessarily with the university themselves. Um and as far as uh norm school DEI committees, um so again that work is continuing. We did have an initial districtwide meeting um
that did occur in February with community committee leads from all of our schools. Um we are including those indicators in our we're including DEI indicators surveys um that have gone out for state of the schools and we will be
using state of the schools outcomes uh to drive our future DI commitments and continue to work with those committees at our schools so that we build some cohesiveness amongst those groups and we've worked to support students and schools in the areas that they need and what we're hearing back from our school community. The same will go with our
support for staff. We are including those indicators in our staff surveys and we will again build out what we will do for future supports for our staff based on the results we get now from staff as we move forward into next school year with the behavioral and academic
support for students. Um we we put out a huge inventory to our schools and I think I had with that um in February and we got those results and it was very very informative. We looked at areas um across all the various types of supports that we put in place for students. So in
our INRS processes, in our 504 processes, in our special education processes, um in our mental health supports, um and what we did was we really got to see a very um good picture of where we need to build capacity,
where we need to review process. And I think that was part of an initial step that Dr. FEMA would be working on in some of her strategic planning area. So we will be able to share that data. So it kind of gives her a head start as to where the schools indicated um that we will be working. So so that has really
been helpful. Um the team did a deep dive and analysis on a lot of that data and um you know we'll be able to we're identifying areas of professional development moving into next year and again some of that we are aware of. It's why we have areas like MTSS and INRS
that we were already had identified moving into strategic planning. But it those that data collection really helped to support where we were already headed um and and really gave us some additional data from the schools um and from the people doing that work
specifically. And then CST practices again um you know the special education department as part of their presentation. Um they they did come out with an action plan that is in the process of being implemented. Surveys uh for special education parents were also
implemented in late spring as was part of the special education action plan. They've created feedback loops with CPAG that um have been established and again next steps are incorporated in strategic plan and we'll be moving forward with all those continued efforts.
Dr. Schwarz, can we go back to the act the goal slide? Yeah, one more. So this did it only include uh DEI and special needs or did this goal also
include other stuff like college admissions, academic uh excellence, all of those um ESL, math were they all part of this goal or was that a uh no it's the sec that's the third goal is the more the academic focus okay so uh and
for the DEI and uh any other part so for at the end of our first year our First year's goals were to collect the data and present current state and then uh for the second year we wanted to start making progress through that. So but are
we going to be present are we still collecting data year over year or data collection was just a one time exercise for for that like for example for DEI we collect last year we presented the data for um different number of teachers versus the demographic information for
students versus teachers in different buildings staff not just teachers so meaning that like the proportionality analysis right so that was was that just a one-time effort or I I was thinking that that's an year over that we'll be presenting on that. So that was a starting point u last year and then what
would be what is it safe this year? Is there any change this year just where we are on that? So um in so far as any metrics seem to actually be useful to us or to drive decision-m um we certainly would repeat those efforts. I think um I
think it would be fruitful for us to have a conversation about which of those metrics that we pulled last time around were helpful because um because it it's an area that we have a low level of control and and I don't I don't know that some of all that data necessarily led to action. So we can track things
over time even if they even if it we're not really able to see movement it's still fruitful to do so just to track just to know just to know where we are and it may be it may be correct it may be it may not need any changes but just to track so we did a lot of those last
time so if we can focus on which ones are the most impactful like I I know like the graphs work are nice but I think that we can it's probably a little more straightforward to do like a matrix or table view so if you're good with that I think we'll we'll stick with that. I think that's a little more manageable than all the different charts.
So, with G&T practices, um very happy to report that we are moving forward with establishing G&T at our K8 levels. Um we did identify and budget for these goals for the 2526 school year. and we have started the process of identifying the
staff that will be working with our G&T students with a with um a focus on metacognition for all students and we're in the process of going through hiring for the elementary G&T positions. Uh currently uh Mr. Ross has been leading
that interview process with the elementary team and we're working on identifying staff at the middle school level um that will be taking this on as we start this program in the winter of next school year. And then lastly, intramural sports.
Oh, I just have a question. They're starting you're hiring now and then they're going to start working. Is that elementary only in the fall of 2025 or is that going to be middle school? And then you'll when is
winter? January. So they need So uh so we're currently interviewing right now uh hoping to hire our teacher our elementary teachers as soon as possible. Three. So they'll each work in two schools. At the elementary, excuse me, at the uh middle school level, we have
current staff members who will be reassigned to that G&T position. So we will have effectively a team of five, a KA team of five and uh in the fall they will work out of their respective buildings but they will be coming
together to create this program to create the curriculum to uh test and analyze the student data to push into classrooms to get to know the kids to assess our students so that we can design a program that is driven by the
data produced by our students. How will you be identifying the students that will be participating? So, uh it's a multiple measures approach. Uh we will be using most likely Kogat testing. Uh we will also be looking at uh other
student performance data, student portfolio work, there will be teacher input, there can be parent input. So, we really want to see a kind of a 360 degree view of each child so we really know who they are and what their gifts are. And it's important to remember too that per the state law, the
strengthening gifted and talented act, you need not be globally gifted. You can be gifted in one particular area. So you could be mathematically gifted, you could be musically gifted. So you know there's there's all sorts of dimensions to this and so it's our goal to try to capture as many of those dimensions in
our students as possible. Um define would you say Kogat testing for those of us? Yes. Kogat. Yes. Yes. Uh cognitive uh aptitude act. Yes. uh test uh and it's I won't go too far in into it, but basically, you know, it is
a test that uh gives us a picture of their of our students thinking. You can there's actually K through 12 editions of it. We were most likely going to do either second or third and fifth or sixth. So, we haven't pulled the trigger on that yet. I just wanted to get a sense of where it came from and what it was. Okay. Thank you. So, we'll be
getting some information about the curriculum. So, they're going to be working on Absolutely. If you remember the world language model from two falls ago at the elementary level, it'll be very similar to that model where we hired the teachers and then they created the curriculum in the fall. I believe it
was late November when they actually started teaching the curriculum that year. So, it's going to be a very similar model. Okay. And when will the middle school teachers do they know of their reassignments? uh they're in conversation right now and so I believe uh at least uh one and I'm not sure I
think at GW we might be set and BF they might still be finalizing those discussions but yes they're in conversations about all of their scheduling and their u assignments for next year I can just since we're on the topic and there might be some folks who weren't a part of our superintendent coffee and the conversation that came
out of that I just want to throw out a couple couple items and Mr. Mr. Ross, if you could opine. Sure. First, I just want to remind everybody that all of our mics are set to the same volumes and so if you just keep that 6 in distance, then we don't get that feedback. Okay, no problem. So, um, so, uh, you know,
yes, we do have to, yes, we follow like any individual measures, but I just want to put out there for the record that these that gifted gifted definitions are are locally established and are as compared to the local
population. So remember, Ridgewood Public Schools, the the generally speaking, our students perform very well. So we're talking about services for students who cannot have all their needs met in a differentiated general education classroom environment because
they are so outlined. So you can outline in any in in any one specific domain, but the concept of being an outlier is a is a is very real. We're not talking about just students who get who do well in school and complete all their requirements or even get straight A's.
We're talking about very specific learning needs and socialization needs with similar style learners. And so therefore, we'll have the multiple measures to identify those students. But we want to what was the expression that we used at the uh Oh, I I think I said it's not a cool club. It's a service.
And as you said, it's to serve a need. a need that exists outside of the classroom beyond classroom differentiation because we will be using these teachers to deliver enrichment for all. So they will be pushing into classrooms K5 and 68 to do critical
thinking exercise and challenges to kind of lift the level of all boats across the district. Yes. For all students. So they won't it's not as if they'll be teaching you know seven students. They're going to be teaching everyone in different ways. So um so two things. The first is I want to make sure my six
inches away so I'm not annoying anyone. But so the way we're identifying then it's it's relative correct. It's a relative standard because it's somebody who's an outlier in Rididgewood not in you know Illinois. It's not compared to
the population in New Jersey. Right. Okay. So that's number one. Number two, I just wanted to comment because I did listen to the coffee and again you're repeating it. I think it's really important and I thank you for being so clear about what the gifted and talented
um program is designed to do and to um just make us understand that it's not it's not just fun enrichment. It's really a need and I think I think that was also raised by one of the parents but it's how do we serve how do we yeah
how do we serve how do we meet the needs of these kids and I love the fact that it can be just in one area or you know many and I do appreciate your efforts so I just wanted to say that thank you and last but not least is intramural sports. So, this continues to be a
conversation. Um, we do have some intramural sports that are already in place at BF. Um we are reviewing information that we've collected from other districts to see how other districts in Bergen County are are managing this um in addition to their regular programs and we're currently
exploring you know what constraints we have um as far as budget space um as well as what student interest would be because we would like to continue this conversation about how can we expand this to both middle schools and possibly the high school um into next year. So hopefully we'll see a little bit of
this. I'm hopeful maybe in late spring we can introduce some additional opportunities for students that don't want to participate necessarily in varsity sports programs with us or competitive traveling club sports and give them opportunities for play that are really valuable for kids. So the the
ones that are at BF already in place were they added this year as pilot or are they pre-existing? Pre-existing. They weren't for this year. So, so what was like when we say in process what was done this year for
towards this goal? So, we were collecting information to figure out what would be feasible um and we're still in that process to to figure out where our constraints are. So, we looked at what other districts were doing this year to figure out what are some of the models out there. So, and that is uh a
question that I had asked in a different context earlier when we compare with other district or what other districts do. So, how are we picking these districts and which districts have we picked for that? Like what is the criteria to pick the districts? We did general outreach to other Bergen
County districts that are neighboring to us um and similar to us in structure. Um and other districts that actually have robust intramural programs. Not every district has a robust interural program. So, looking at districts that have expanded those a little bit more more widely to understand what they're doing
and how they're managing it. in some cases they have really robust in mural programs but their programs aren't as necessarily robust as ours when it comes to varsity sports. So taking all of that into consideration um just trying to get ideas for how we can move forward. I just to be clear though we did collect
data specifically regarding this. We embedded some of this data in our surveys and we have found some generally positive response rates. The question becomes what what what's the what's the strategy in terms of when to offer it because we have so many activities and sports especially at the high school level which is where a lot of this was coming from but our facilities are so
heavily used so how do exactly do we integrate it so we're looking at like offseasons so for example offering things like vol like intramural volleyball or basketball in like the spring or the fall when when other teams aren't inside but then we also have to find the staffing we did do there was an analysis done on on general pay I think
we looked at what other districts do and we basically established that this something that we can probably pilot within our within our normal budget without having to make any kind of special considerations, but we just have to work with the local association to establish a a fair stipend or compensation package. But but to be
clear, we we we at this point we do feel like we we're going to be able to expand and pilot in the coming year. GW has had for many many years both track and volleyball for many years. I know I I know they had it last year. volleyball
might have not been as popular. So they may not have done volleyball but track I don't know about this year but I know that it's a very positive things for kids to do that whipple ball kids have organized whipple balls whipple ball leagues just amongst themselves and with
some informally. So I do think there is something for the kids to do after school that are not heavily involved in competitive sports but still like their sports. So I think this is very positive and is well worth the effort to
investigate fund. Yeah. I I just want to highlight this as well. I do think this should be a big priority for us. Um because this is something that you know there unless you're doing the really competitive track and I have kids that are doing that personally. But I think
the overall benefit to the student population is more in intramural sports because it allows everybody to participate. Um, and so when you have that offering at the middle school, and it's really weak for us now. Yes, there are some programs, but it's just hitting a very small portion of our population,
if you have that offering at the middle school level, high school level, potentially even at elementary school level, uh, now you're keeping these kids busy and doing something healthy and keeping their cardiovascular going, right? I mean, it's just these kids need it. They need things to be involved in
physical perspective, from a social perspective, to get off their screens. So I would say let's prioritize this uh and let's think outside the box. I mean if we have I know we have a limitation on facilities but there are facilities. So if we need to give other more competitive clubs the boot so we get
priority we might need to do that right because yeah we have to think for our students first. Um so I would just highlight let's let's make this a priority for sure. You've been advocating for it for four or five years now. What is it? You've been advocating for it for four or five years now. And
look we have an advantage. I mean, we're the second largest district in Bergen County in terms of number of our students first, right? So, that gives us an advantage where we can do the inter mural. A lot of smaller ones can't because there's just not enough population. So, should be able
to. Okay. Next, we're going to invite Mr. Ross. Uh he is uh he had been a part of district goal 3 before he transitioned into the director position. That's correct. Um but he did he has taken over leadership over this goal and we look forward to hearing him share. Um
remember we talked about habits of work uh com and to be clear we had very more specific goal language for each of these but for the sake of being able to represent these cleanly. Um I reduced the activity to like a short description but basically we had focus on making sure that we move forward with the habits of work because that was a really
positive outcome from the last strategic plan. Common assessments and progress monitoring program evaluation for math and ELA. Of course, obviously those are the meat and potatoes of education and we want to make sure we're doing them well. Uh one pagers and frequently asked questions uh have been been an ongoing topic about making sure that parents
feel empowered to have access to the the learning resources in the schools and understand what their kids are learning. Instructional alignment obviously we've identified some gaps and then generative AI which we've heard about today. So Mr. Ross we'll hand it over to you. Thank you Dr. Forest. U so we've talked about
habits of work. habits of work was a part of instruction this year and the uh lessons and observations that our teachers and supervisors con conducted. And just to clarify, we're talking about student reflection here. We're talking about activities in which students are
asked to reflect and to give feedback to other students and receive and reflect with that feedback. So we will really continue habits of work next year uh in earnest again focusing on reflection um just as we will start the work on
journey of a graduate through our strategic plan. So habits of work will run through the year as we start to build out journey of a graduate and there's a lot of overlap so that's going to be a natural fit. Our next category is really all about multi-tered systems of support. Um so you've heard a lot
about that. We've had some presentations on that. Next year is really going to be the year of MTSS where we're really going to be doubling down on that. We've already done some work with it this year. We brought in a guest speaker at our last professional development day on March 17th. We have here at the ed
center started looking at different progress monitoring systems that we could purchase. Our supervisors are currently uh taking a look at their various departments and courses to ensure that we have common assessments and we still have some work to do in that area and we will continue that
work. In the area of program eval, we've done a ton of data analysis and articulation work. You can see that um math we've really drilled into especially in the transition of five to six. Um our math supervisor Ashley Ombo
has also done great work with linkit. You may remember our link presentation from a few months ago. Um just about a week and a half ago, Miss Onbo sent out the results of linkit C to the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade teachers with an analysis of how the students had performed against certain standards and
then you know kind of a plan of attack to assist students in growing those skills. So that's happening. We're going to continue that articulation work and we're going to continue to look at the data in ELA. We've talked a lot about science of reading and evidence-based
uh systems. Uh so we are uh we have been working with the consultant Dr. Molly Ness who's really a worldrenowned literacy expert. She worked with our K and one teachers on decodable texts this spring. She's coming on the 29th to work with our grade 2 teachers and our admin staff. So we're going to be assessing
that work and thinking about how we would best leverage her consultant work next year. We're also working on our instructional expectations for the 2526 year to ensure that we are implementing with fidelity some of the changes that we're working on and that work is going going to continue throughout the year.
So we're we're we're making great progress but we're not quite there yet. We've talked a lot about as Dr. Schwarz mentioned um increasing parent family access to critical curriculum information. So, I had a meeting with
the supervisors last week to talk about how we could facilitate this. And we're we're thinking about creating a general template for these one pages and FAQs because we want them to be uniform. We also have to figure out where we would like them to be housed. Would they be placed in Rubicon? Would they go on the website? Possibly both. So, this this is
also evolving and and you will see that information, but I had a great conversation with Dr. Schwarz, too, about just our curriculum and how we're presenting it to our community. So that that's that's uh something that we're we're taking great care to uh to think about over the next uh you know several months to year. Instructional alignment
is really kind of similar to the program eval but it's obviously all disciplines. So we are consistently doing vertical articul vertical and horizontal articulation sessions for all of our departments. Uh we're going to continue that. That's kind of standard practice. But we really want to make sure that our
teachers are as aligned as possible. Whether we're talking about course level, department level, across town with our two middle schools or our six elementary schools. And then finally, you heard a presentation tonight on generative AI. This is going to be a major part of our strategic plan just
how we are uh introducing or really not introducing at this point but how how we are leveraging the power of AI and ensuring that we're producing our students are able to produce authentic work. So we're going to be uh creating another uh technology task force at some
point. Uh we do need to finalize a board policy for this. We have the Strauss Esme draft. So we're going to come back to that at some point. Uh we have adopted brisk teaching. Uh we we sort of toe dipped with this great tool over the course of the spring. Susan Nol, our ELA
supervisor, took the lead on that and did a great job. And so we'll be we'll be using that in 612. Uh and teachers are dabbling all over the district with you know different AI uh tools and we brought in a great consultant Greg Kulitz who did some modules for us and there's a strong appetite to bring him
back. So the good news is that you know people are engaging with this and they're trying to figure out and you heard our students tonight talk about it. You know what can we do with this and how can we make it equitable? Any question further questions for Mr. Ross? Yes if we can go back to the goal.
Oh and Mr. Donnie you had mentioned uh college right? So there was this whole talk about uh college admissions academic academic recognition. Yes. Uh so where so where was that? That's really a big part of our strategic plan. That's actually a goal, one of our sub
goals in that was one of the goals from last year also somewhere, right? Like the the whole academic excellence or academic recognition part recognizing academic excellence
um and the uh when we talked about that different uh assessments so grading policies and assessments. So that was all part of last year's goal. Oh, it's in district goal one under vision 2030
strategic plan. That's that's where that language you're remembering. It's actually district goal one and that's what he was referring to. Yes. And that's actually a major part of our strategic plan. But how are we displaying that in this year's like are we saying it's in process? It's started. It's how are we displaying that all of
that information? I don't like I'm I'm trying to understand what changed from last year till from last year to this year in terms of um the grade grading policies when in high school for example if there are two or three teachers teaching the
same class is there a consistent grading policy there um when we had this presentation about a year ago with Mr. Nyas and Mr. Bailey at that time they mentioned that the supervisors are working on it. So then so it's almost 18 months now. So so what happened since
then? So that's one question I would have on on that. Um academic uh recognition we have talked about this multiple times. So what happened where are we like we are now reviewing the whole year right? So what changed this
year compared to last year in terms of um ELA because ELA here we are showing established. So math I can say established but if we are putting math and ELA in the same uh row and showing the same color I personally would
disagree with that because math definitely we have made huge progress there right but in ELA compared to where we were last year and this year. So if the goal the goal was rewarded as um
establish or plan can you read that how you worded that Dr. shorts on on the on that row listed as established here right here. So, oh, you want to look at this? No, the uh
ELA and math row. There was a Yes. So, program eval. So, program eval was not this year's goal. Program eval was last year's goal. So, program evaluation and the current state that what is current state was done last year. Right? So that was already
completed in 20 uh as of a year ago and then we had a plan of action and you presented that about a year ago for ELA. So um what I'm trying to understand is so we had a presentation in math and we had a presentation for ELA. We had a a
presentation on what's our what are our goals for ELA right uh and science of reading. Um so since then this year with math we have made a lot of progress. So we have achieved all of those goals. So we identified gaps. We introduced um a
full quarter worth of extra class in math for for gaps in 8th grade. We changed the geometry and algebra sequence. We added more math classes. We added more computer classes. So a lot of work was done in math. for if we are putting math
and ELA in the same category, I am having trouble in understanding what changed in ELA's from last year. So we we called a consultant, we paid a consultant, the consultant came a few times, talked to a few teachers, but then what? So and I'm I'm not even seeing a plan of action that okay what
are the next steps right so if we came out at the end of this whole year if we came out with some steps that okay yes these are the next steps then also we can say that there's something established otherwise I think um ELA should go in in process not as established or at least they should not
be clubed together in the same category and also on the one pagers if it's in process do we have like have we added any one pagers or any fa Q so far or any consistency across all elementary schools for same processes. That was the eventual goal right that when we are
doing different processes uh every elementary school should have consistency. So do we have examples of when we say in process we have a draft of a program of studies for the elementary school and the elementary school is a little bit simpler in the sense that you know reading is reading whether you're at Haw or Willard or
anywhere else. uh it becomes a little bit more complicated once you start to break out into chemistry and you know as we as the kids you know go up into you know the upper grades. Um so that's really where the lion share of our work is going to be. So and I'd like to jump in on a couple
things there. So first of all you know we because of the sequence of things this year last year because of the timing of the surveys we timed the surveys around the spring break because we wanted to have a consistent time of year that we asked them. So it's pushed our state of the schools address for after the district goal presentation.
Last year we did the reverse. We did state of the schools first then we did district goals. So we don't have all the data analysis to share. But what we have been seeing is a consistently generally high performance among our students within language arts. We've actually
been seeing more areas for improvement within math. So whereas it might appear that we've done more in math to to to someone um the reality is that we have we definitely definitively have more that we have to do language arts we're in the process of memorializing all of
the work that we have been doing so that we're so that our practices align are reflected fully in our documents and that we can make assertions that all the resources that teachers have align with with our expectations. But there has been a considerable amount of
professional development training from some of the best that's out there. So I would just say if there's is there something other than seeing it all reflected in the the core documents, is there something specific that that you're alluding to that that would have been done that hasn't been done? No. So
okay I think we are if we are using the data to justify what that we are doing it correct already then we probably don't need professionals to come in and so if you're saying our
NJSLA results are reflecting that ELA we are already doing better right so that is if we are using that stance then do we need to make any changes do we need to make any improvements. I just I don't want to I just want to make sure I understand what
your specific concerns are. So my my concern is because you use that example for the data, right? So because you use the ELA results data or test test scores. So that's where I would argue that okay, if we are using test scores to justify
um do we need to make changes? If we need to make changes, if we have these consultants coming in, what's the end goal? What are we trying to get to? I just want to understand that one pager that okay what are we like math we were
we clearly understood that there is a change of sequence of programming there are new courses being added um and uh at 8th grade level and high school level and revised process for um selecting students for advanced math. So we had
specific items that outcomes we had specific outcomes of the exercise for math for ELA. What are the specific outcomes from all of this exercise that we have done in two years? So I don't treat any data outcomes or initiatives with level with that level of certainty
meaning that we we should have a theory of action with respect to everything that we're doing and we should be seeking certain evidence for that that what we're doing is makes sense. So as of right now, the current hypothesis that we're working under is that there that that it would appear that our
students language arts scores have been generally high. Our math scores have been somewhat lagging, but uh and that we have some that we clearly have some examples of some very good practice in district. We generally if we don't have documents that are very clear about what
our expectations are that there's always room to improve. But generally speaking continuously seeking professional development from the best in the business is just is is how we that's a concept of like with the strategic plan we're talking about pursuing excellence versus just treating it as a tradition
of excellence. Again I think I think you mentioned actually yourself right that the concept of a tradition of excellence can be construed to be like almost a defense of the status quo. So we want to make sure that if we're going to maintain a tradition of excellence, we have to be consistently pursuing excellence. So we have to look for
constantly being exposing our staff and our curricular work to what is the most makes the most sense. And I say that from a researchbased perspective and an evidence-based perspective and that we're tracking the data to ensure that we're actually that it's playing out as
we would expect for our kids. So that's what I'm I I I just want to make sure that I feel like we're having a little bit of a disconnect with respect to what we're trying to accomplish. Okay. So, I'll try to explain in a different way. So, u when Mr. Ross and two other teachers presented uh the science of reading and ELA program about a year
ago, um there were a lot of specifics in that plan, right? So, from that plan, what has been implemented this year? Well, we've we've done a number of things. So for example um the uh UFly uh foundations program which is uh
systematic phonics instruction we rolled out this year we've seen good work with it however I think we need to focus our efforts on the scope and sequence which has you know and we have seen the data on that when taught with fidelity students make huge gains there's
research to support that so what we really want to do is get more training on that for our teachers and a big part of this too is you know we're a very big district we want to ensure consistency. We've had that conversation, I think, in a number of forums. So, wherever you live in Ridgewood, your third grader
should have the same experience as the third grader on the other side of town. So, part of this work is aligning our instructional expectations, you know, and making sure that that's undergurtded by the latest research. And another thing I would just share is that if you remember that presentation where we had the reading rope up there and we kind of talked you through all of that, there's
even newer research that says that's great, but it won't even get you where you need to to go until you add on executive functioning. So the research itself is evolving as well. So that to Dr. Schwarz's point, you know, we really need to be agile. We really need to be, you know, always looking for the next, you know, the next angle on professional
development. So, so from if I want to rephrase from that presentation, we implemented uh systematic phonics, correct? Yes, absolutely. So, to to what extent is it universal across all six schools? It's catered to all six schools. Uh we've also taken a look at
our um uh level reading libraries and and taken away the um the letters and we're we're restructuring our libraries to be more thematic or more by author because we now know that the research really does not support leveled reading.
So you know that you know we actually you know have this uh study that says it's no more accurate than a coin toss. So so so things like that are actually were rolled out. They were implemented all of the points that you had presented. Absolutely. So, uh do we have a target date for uh uh rearranging or
reconfiguring all of the libraries? So, that we're working on that now because we're trying to figure out what's the best way to do that. We had some people who, you know, when they learned that they did it that night, you know, and other people who are a little bit more resistant need a little bit more time. So, again, we want to ensure that consistency and make sure, you know, we've talked about giving teachers
department time and so we want to hammer that out and say by such and such date you have to reorganize. Perfect. And then there was another cont uh concept that you talked about uh content based learning where you gave the example of baseball versus uh right so u so
contentbased learning so have we made any progress in content based learning and is there a plan there so what we're doing right now is actually um working with our ELA curriculum committee to at each of the grade levels K through five to select two units for next year where
we can align reading writing social studies science the um read aloud books, the shared reading to to gradually phase this in to see how we can make it feel organic and not forced. So So that's something that we're hammering out now. We should have that set by June 30th as
well. Thank you. We also have the social studies curriculum and the Yes. And we have Well, we also Yes, that's a big one. We implemented That's a huge one. Forgive me. Uh we implemented our uh social studies curriculum this year. Um inquiry journeys and that's a K5 program.
uh very heavy on the reading, the class conversation, exploration, um inquiry, you know, uh so we rolled that out this year. I think it was very successful. Teachers may have been a little bit overwhelmed at first, but really talking to everybody, they're really thrilled with it. There's a very high level of
engagement with our students. So what we're trying to do now is just refine those units and figure out what's the best way to deliver that structure next year. Right. So, so that's Dr. Sh when we when I say okay, what was done? So these are four or five points that what have we done in phonics, what have we done with inquiry, the enquiring
journeys, yes, uh the readalouds, content based study. So those are are topics where we wanted to make the progress, right? So that's where we can track the progress that are we doing it across all grades and across all schools. Thank you for the clarifying
questions and you're right, those would have been great to just put on here, right? Because those are clear changes from last year. So thank you for that. And if you if and if when and I can we can we can update the this the presentation to include those items as well. And on the u FAQs also FAQ if we
can have some examples of what type of FAQ FAQs are we generating uh what type of questions keep coming up to elementary school principles repeatedly and whether if those answers can be posted online and if they are consistent across all schools. We'll do and Mr. I
think you had you had some level of I think you might be able to give like some little level of specificity. I think you had like some sort of a plan for piloting those or at least getting them off the ground. We do. We you know we had initially decided to embed them in um the new curriculum writing projects but then what we determined through further examination was that you
might get a series of documents that are not uniform. So the first thing we want to do is get our supervisors and they this was their idea and I think they were they were very smart to suggest this. they first want to generate templates for the one pagers and the FAQs so that we do not have another situation where there's 17 versions of
you know of of math you know that sort of math FAQs or math one pages so we're going to create these templates the supervisors are going to to take that on and then they and the teachers together will be able to generate those documents and again we just have to make a determination as to the best place where they can live and so you know that's that's a something for the
administration and Miss Corless to to really help us because we want to make them as accessible as possible to for parents. That's another one where you can use the AI. If if principles are responding to messages and that is not specific to a
student, if there's a generic question, right, those they can start BCCing to a common account and that account can collect all of those responses from different uh administrators and use the AI to generate as long as it's not a student specific information. That's a
green light. That's a green light. So um okay so um with regard to AI actually um I just kind of piggybacking a little bit off what uh Mr. Donnie said and I was thinking about the students
presentation. Um I know that in policy we're talking about an AI policy and um we've talked a lot about what you know the Strauss Esme aside which it was it was a great policy but you know how do we individualize it for Rididgewood but
I you know I like this concept of authentic work and as I think about it um I would also like to see our policy and the discussions to um focus not just on authentic work for our students, but
I believe our students are entitled to authentic work from our faculty because that's the magic of it, right? And so, uh, I I'm not suggesting that they wouldn't because they have been and and always will be, but I think that that's an important concept that we should
embed in policy. So, um, I would just throw that out there and and yes, and I would add to when we talk about this, there's policy with a capital P that we're putting on our website and we're talking about here, but then there's also just how we live and and how we interact and how we talk about the ethics of this. So, right, there's the
student ethical piece, the the staff ethical piece. So, I think that's going to be something that we're going to start talking about and negotiating together as a group and a community. Yeah. And I I think that's a a great conversation to have. I've always been very proud of of the um ethics and the pride that is um evidenced by our staff
and our students and our community. So, I expect it'll be nothing less than that when we get to AI. Agreed. They've had great conversations so far and I expect them to continue. All right. Thanks everyone. Um and uh Harrison, you know, this is your last meeting and we're talk
touching a lot on the student experience. if you want to jump in on any of this. Do you have anything you want to share with the comments I made? Thank uh Miss McCalli for her comment about about the staff. I think that's a good point. Um it's something that's come up in discussions a lot uh when you
know my principal's advisory board has has talked about AI. um that kind of idea has come up a lot where in the same way a teacher doesn't want a student handing in an essay that um AI wrote. You know, a student doesn't want feedback on that essay that the teacher didn't write. Um so I think that's a
good point and something to consider. It's it's kind of a two-way street albeit uh you know there's rightfully so more of a focus on the students. Um you know just making sure that and it's the same thing like you know AI can can help can can maybe make that feedback come faster. That's kind of a point we've
talked about a lot where if AI is is helping the teachers grade, you know, students don't have to wait, you know, a month to get feedback on an essay, you know, which which can make it a lot more helpful. Um, but at the end of the day, you know, the authentic work, you know, is important uh from both sides. So, I think it's a good point. So, thank you
for saying that. Thank you, Harrison. All right. And then our last goal was goal four, which was about evaluating the district's finances and facilities. We've had a lot of movement in this space this last year. Um, at the time that we built this goal, uh, Mr. Matthews was just walking in the
door. He's done quite a bit of work. We talked about uh, setting up the budget, doing a facilities assessment, working on master site plans, doing a security assessment, auditing our vendors, looking at busing equity, looking at property acquisition, and evaluating our athletic fields. So, Mr. Matthews, do
you want to walk through uh, a couple of your items here? Sure. Thank you, Dr. Schwarz. So, uh, budget projection and presentation was, uh, completed back on the April time frame. We had the public hearing. We just pretty much closed the loop on the 2526 budget process and
presentation. Uh, we met with all the schools and departments um, and went through what was actually in the 2526 budget. So we sat down, we went through their their budget justifications and their meetings going through the 2425 uh numbers, their uh 2526 their request
and the actual after the budget was adopted in April to show them like what's actually in the budget. We went through a whole bunch of tabs regarding like capital uh improvements, additional items um to start putting things into the 2627 budget, but we closed that loop
last week with our final school. I think it was Willard and um Treval we did last week. So every principal, every school, every department knows what's in their 2526 budget and they're starting to already work on their 26 27 stuff. Um
facilities assessment was uh received uh in the January I think time frame. We've used that as a u a launching pad to be able to look at the u next year's capital uh budget. So in the 2526 we um did the uh we the roof the boiler the
elevators um and the elevator bids have come in and we're going through that process right now. The master site plans is still in the in process and we're still looking at um different opportunities regarding the master site plans. Security
assessment has also been done and we're looking at securities as a 2627 priority for the budget looking at ballards and things like that for 2627. Um, next slide. Uh, I'll just add to a couple of those because we worked on some of these together. So, the
master site plan concept is aspirational. That's why we're saying it's in process. Um, our goal is to have some sort of a sense of each master's plan for each school because we don't want to just do short-sighted work. We like want to make sure that we're being forward thinking. Um so that is something that is we don't necessarily
have a timeline for but it's an aspiration that we're continuing to focus on and we'll talk we'll continue to talk with the facilities committee about. Um and then the security assessment we actually are we have not done a third party security assessment. We're looking to we are hoping to do that with the state level uh homeland
the state level um school security team. They're pretty busy. We've reached out since the prosecutor's office which we've talked about here um and we're hoping to be able to pull something off with them this summer. That said, we are we did start we did form a district-wide uh uh security uh team and we meet
quarterly uh and that has helped move some topics along. Specifically, Mr. Matthews and his team have been able to fasttrack the upgrading of all the fire panels in the schools or almost all the fire panels pretty much all and and by the new year they'll all be updated. Right. Correct. And so we're going from a system whereby the only mechanism that
a school would signal the fire department was the old game well box system which was a very reliable system but it can't it was copper and it's analog and it can't send any actual encrypted it can't send any actual information. It's no there's no digital signal along it. So they would hear a fire alarm or they would hear an alarms
going off but they would have no context. They'd know where it was but they wouldn't know where in the school it was um or or or what what was going on. All of our modern fire panels now can communicate the type of alarm that's going off, what room it's happening in.
Um, and they can go in with a with a greater sense of clarity and be more responsive. So, it's significantly better for for for school safety. Even though a lot of times when we talk about school security, we're always thinking fire safety, but that is a very a very real concern that that of course we have. Um, we have identified a variety
of of of additional improvements that we've talked about with the facilities committee that we do want to really make sure is on our immediate horizon with a 2627 budget and we'll be focused on that there as well. Yeah. Prosecutor's office is too busy. Are there other consulting organizations
that could do a quick assessment? We probably could find somebody. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, generally speaking, our law enforcement partners are just a great local resource to build a rapport with as well. But but there are I'm sure there are some folks who charge us I just wonder if there are organizations or companies that are more uh uh well
balanced than just focus and takes in also perspectives. I do know of a couple firms that that are that that sell products specifically, but I'd have to see if we could if I if there's a I'm not aware of
any we can we can be on the lookout for that because you're talking about someone who is not selling something per se. But as someone who is an independent consultant who would come in and give you like a high level analysis of like what an optimal an optimal profile would be of your school. Okay. Yeah, that's a
good suggestion. perspective. So that's a challenge when you go away from like analog hardwires. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm aware of some providers that offer highly integrated systems, but you mentioned that, but I
don't know that traditional security folks are actually at a point where they're recommending those things. So So maybe maybe maybe just uh maybe we just we're creating a business for somebody. Somebody's got to create a solution for us here. But that's a good idea. Thank you for that. We'll follow up on that.
All right, Mr. Matthews. So, vendor services uh audit that's basically going through all the expired contracts that we have for 2425 and 2526. And so, actually, I g I guess year to date, we've done the custodial
contract. We've done broker for medical and property and casualty. We've done elevator bids, ground bids, architects um bid is coming through this week. Uh the grounds bid is coming through this week as well as solid waste bid is going out. So we have like seven or eight solid bids that are out on the street
right now and um we're actually ready to make an award for medical and property at the June meeting. Um we've already um we're going through the elevator bid uh bidding process right now. I mean we received the bids going through the uh the presentations. We made an award for
custodial as well um with ACB coming on board starting on um July 1. They're actually working in the district right now. And uh we have another we have a whole calendar of items that have to be bid out that just haven't been bid. Um blessing equity,
we're we're doing transportation right now regarding u that particular bid, going through the uh the specs. Property acquisition, we've done two RFPs. We've had no luck getting companies. We've gone door todoor to get
companies. Um, we reached out to a company called Compass Realy just the other day. We had Tarver uh real estate who didn't have the proper paperwork, the BRC and W9. We reached out to a company called Wan Realtors. So, we're waiting for
um Michelle's been contacting me, Dr. Felic, you know, just just want to know what's going on with that. So, we are making phone calls, uh, reaching out to companies, and we're waiting for some paperwork to come come in for a couple companies to be able to get a a company, a realtor, uh, a record for the district
for 25 26. I think we're close to having someone that we can use for a few months and then hopefully for the full year. Uh, athletic field evaluation, that's in process right now. Uh, we finally got a narrative that just came in this week. We haven't had a chance to review. was
about 170 pages long regarding different timelines on on the fields regarding BF and some other projects. So, um we're looking to make an award for the BF project in July time frame. I I met with the architect today. Their bispec should be going out sometime in June and the
goal is to have that uh uh substantially completed by by the fall regarding BF. Um that's about it. Dr. shorts. Uh I I think and we also I think you mentioned busting equity. I think you might have skipped over that one, but that's something that we actually just discussed with I believe
it was the finance committee. Was that right? So we're so we're not we're not in a place where we have a firm handle on that, but we have analysis and and reporting and work coordinating with the committee has has begun on that. We went through that during the the agenda review last week. Yeah. Right. Can you can you provide some details of that?
What's uh causing that uh evaluation? Like is there a Yeah. So we've yeah we've received concerns from community our staff has high highlighted and identified that we we have some inconsistencies with respect to the busing that we provide to some folks. Um some of it appears to be driven by
policy. We have certain routes that have been identified by policy um as as being as being hazardous routes that would require busing. That's not entirely consistent with uh the state's use of the term hazardous routes, but it appears that we do have some other uh over time some folks who aren't even on
that hazardous routes list have got have been have been receiving busing. So, we just want to make sure that we so we regularly field calls. Our business office regularly fields calls about folks who say, well, you know, my neighbors getting busing. Why am I not getting busing? And in some circumstances, we don't necessarily have
a great answer for that. So we're so that's why we're focused on we're calling it busing equity because we would do want to make sure that we have fair and consistent procedures when we're providing busing for folks. And did I hear correctly that you're saying that we have seven bids or seven people?
No, we sent out we sent out the bids for architect and engineer to seven companies and that that list is still growing as we start finding more companies to send it out to. We want to have right now we just have just the one company. You want to have some options. Right. So for architect, your plan is to
have multiple architects on the record. Yes, sir. Okay. For waste and recycle, you said six or seven. I'm sorry for which one. Waste recycle. We just we just did it just lit literally like last week. Okay. Because last time when we
went out for bid for waste and recycle, we only had one bid. That's probably going to be the same case now. It's hard to get multiple biders for for waste. We're trying to find a way around it, but we we don't we don't have that answer right now. Okay. Um and for ground management, do we know how many
people picked up the packet? The bis spects are coming in on Wednesday. I think we have like three. I think three. Only three have picked up. I think it's Yeah, three or four. I'm not sure exactly. Yeah. But that doesn't mean they're all going to send it in though. But the bid the bid is opening. The bid
openings on Wednesday or Thursday. Grounds. And was it open for a long time or it's something? Yeah, it was open for Yeah. Yeah. A couple weeks. More like more like a month maybe. Three. Three. Picked up the package.
Three to four. I I don't know where he's at. Three to four. That's about all you're going to really get for something like that. Sounds good. All right. If we're good, then the key takeaways and next steps. Um, we did make some progress in our 24-25 goals.
Some places very strong progress. Sorry Mark, I just want to give a quick shout out to Rich and team. I mean, great job uh just thinking outside the box and like all options are on the table for all of our contracts. So, I really appreciate that. Yeah. And maybe maybe things work out. I think a lot is working out for the
better. Maybe things are not the right path forward. Like I think we're all figuring it out together. But just appreciate the beginner's mindset that everything's on the table. Let's think creatively. I echo that. And so, as we said before, 2526 district
goals are going to integrate the vision 2030 priorities. And we'd like to really identify start clarifying those in the 2025 state of the schools address, which I said before is June 2nd. And actually the point that we said before, um, we want to make we want to try to elucidate what those those priorities including
district goals are before before we before we really fully kick off the summer. So in June sometime. All right. Thank you everyone. Any final questions or concerns? All right. Thank you everyone.
I uh I just wanted to to say I I appreciate to see uh like that level of retrospection um and kind of like tracking goals and tracking progress and seeing it laid out so neatly and colorcoded and like easy to follow. I think that's just a really good way of
and I I think uh Rididgewood could do some some well to to share, you know, I think there's a lot of good that happens and I think sometimes the issue is just that it's not uh shared as effectively as it could be. So I just like to see how how how that's been presented and and things to be shared with that. I
think that's a very good way of going about it and I'm happy to see that that retrospection there. So I was actually thinking the same thing. I appreciate the brevity. I'm fine with the uh with the summaries just I think you need a longer version for SR next time
the more detailed version only for ELA only for ELA ELA and the high school uh the academic achievements uh recognizing a academic achievers and the grading policies only
those three or four topics the appendics there sabotes all right well feedback. Appreciate that. Inter mural sports like you keep bringing that every year. I'll keep bringing these every year. Hopefully something will happen. Well, I think when I you know, you see
this, you hear it. Um we're not complacent. We're always pushing forward and I really appreciate that when I see these goals and the work that happens. I second what um Muhammad said to the business office. What progress has been
made after a number of years of of sort of a very slow pace now we're moving ahead a little fast there sometimes hard to keep it all what we're doing but really good job and thank you
to all of our administrators Dr. wars for, you know, your leadership. Um, I I really, someone asked me how I thought the district was doing and all I could say is we're moving forward and that is
wonderful um after some stagnant years. So, um, thank you to all. Well, just a if I can just quick give a shout out just to the team um and just to all our amazing faculty and and all of our employees. We
have a it's it's a it's a joy to to lead Ridg Public Schools and it's a really a joy to to share the decision- making responsibility to everybody. Um they really do a great job. Our principles are great representatives of their schools. our supervisors are great
representatives of their schools and uh and the enthusiasm with which people self- select into these groups and um and get so involved and do so much great work. It's a it's really it's it's it's a joy actually. I really our admin meetings where we break out and work in
the goal groups and I float around and see how everybody's comparing notes and planning next steps. It's uh it's really inspiring. So I I appreciate all all their all their efforts. So, now we'll go to uh You have no more report, right? Yep. I think Do you want
more? Oh, no. But we're all staying awake with chocolate. Thank you, Mary. Um, okay. So, I'll move uh attendance at conferences. Uh, that's a yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. B. Administration. A lot of these items are routine, but I would like to point out um the
2627 calendar um is in this on this agenda. Are the dates right? Um had you checked? Yes. Okay. Um we were we had a discussion about Eid and if if the date was right.
So um uh the um and also um this their second reading of policy 5111 which is about student attendance. Um so um did we um
did we need to say something about that? Um there was a question on on policy 511 about um we had separate residents non-resident not not on the policy the question was on the uh yeah actually it would go resolution so yeah so the the
question you want to say you want me to say as I understood it you can say so so the policy is clear and and uh it talks about one you know a level 5% and then um because We had this discussion at policy. So we have a few
students who were enrolled pre2020, right? And because there are so few of them and they will be aging out of the system relatively quickly, um the decision was made, it's recommended by administration and we agreed at policy that we would not change that tuition
reimbursement amount. So that's not a flat 5%. That is not reflected in the policy. So then the question becomes do we need to amend the policy for that um or not or is any exception to the policy. So that was a question that um
and I thank Sarab because he he raised it. I had missed it and uh I we raised it like 3:00 this afternoon so I apologize for the lateness of it but um so I don't know if we need to amend the policy to reflect you know something
along the lines of um with the exception of those students that were enrolled pre2020 which doesn't really change the substance of the policy as we understand it and if we can then go ahead and adopt it anyway so that we don't lose the time um or if we need to amend it and and
start all over again. The issue is original policy that we had had um the superintendent the tuition rate would be based on recommendation of the superintendent for anybody prior to 2022
u and anybody after 2022 it was 30%. Right? That was our policy before what and once we vote on this policy we are making it flat 5%. And we are saying we we we removed that part where it says recommendation of the superintendent.
It's just flat 5%. So as soon as once we vote on that policy then this resolution that's on the agenda that says upon the recommendation of the superintendent of the school approves the tuition rate and where the superintendent is picking I'm I'm saying superintendent because that's
how I know I know right. And this superintendent is recommending a different rate for uh student staff or rate for students enrolled prior to 2020. This is inconsistent. This is inconsistent with the policy, right? Because the the the goal was to make it
consistent 5% for everybody. That was the goal for the policy when we discussed. So that's how I think it should be uh that it's everybody is at 5%. I I understand that. Um I think that it's not a big difference. It's like a $100 difference if you look at uh Yeah,
I agree. I agree. I I I was just going with um and and I because if these students were enrolled before prior to 2020, they are probably not in grade K. So, they don't we don't have to worry about 669 at 824 number and other
numbers are in the like a difference of $100 or so. Yeah, I I was going with the recommendation of the administration on that and and I feel like, you know, we can make the exception. I I can I provide a little context? Yeah. So, so I so I I thought that we had some level of discussion about this in policy
committee. So if it it wasn't really thorough then I apologize. Um so the original intention of the policy change was to do exactly what everyone just said, you know, have like just a flat policy rate and then we don't have to worry about all the different tiers. Um, it was brought to my attention by our team here that there have that the board
has been making exceptions with the resolution for a certain group of folks who were who had kids in the district prior to a certain time. That was prior to 2020. At this point, that's been five years. There's no one below that age. So, the kids are in the secondary level. And so, the board had been continuing
this. And if we do not continue it, then effectively for some of those folks, they could see an increase of I think it was like a couple hundred or maybe like as much as $400. Um but that 400 one no so so the 200 is the max and that 200 one is or grade 1 to five right so there
is more difference in grades 1 to five but if they are registered before 2020 they should not be yeah they would need to be at that grade so if they are grade 6 to 12 the difference is less than $200. Yeah. So so it's just a matter of it's just a question of how the board
wants to proceed. So this is this is a it's a in this case it's a nominal amount of money and there's a past practice kind of precedent. The board I don't see why the board couldn't uh why it's why it would be a problem if the board created that differential rate other like in terms of like an actual like a like a like a like if it's if if
it's a if you're violating your own rules. I don't think that you are because you're it's additive. It's not you're not you're not doing something different in the policy. You're adding a different tier. That said, if it's nominal enough and it's not something that the board is interested in, then it would primarily affect I I don't know that it would affect anybody. Maybe one
maybe there's one fifth grader. I don't know the exact number is. Um so we would just have to inform those folks that that their number is going to change that it's going to be potentially $200 or more. Well, between $150 to
$200 $250. How many children? How many students are we talking about? It's not a large amount of students, not a large number of students. And I appreciate I I appreciate the logic and and what you're saying. I however I'm I am very happy to continue with the past practice of
making this exception for this short number of people because that was a judgment call that was made kind of internally and I'm happy to support that. Um, no, my question would be the way I would go, but you know, if we have to redo it, we'll redo it. That's awesome. No, that's fine. So my question is more on the procedure part and it's
probably a Dr. Schwarz question that the prior exceptions were the the new 30% rate only applied to staff hired after 2022. Right? So there was no exception that in the prior because anybody before
2020 is different anyway. So that was prior to 20 before that policy. There used to be three tiers for some reason. So that that three tiers because there were already two tiers when that policy came into place. Yeah. So from your perspective, if you think that the board
can vote on something that goes against our own policy, then I'm fine with that. So I'm I'm receive that advice from you. I wouldn't listen, I wouldn't say that it goes against your own policy. It's in addition to your own policy. So you set the you set the percentage rate, but here you're basically saying that you're
going to offer a lower rate to to to people who are being grandfathered in this capacity. I my recommendation is not I'm not telling you that this is the optimal way to do it. I'm merely presenting the recommendation as a continuation of what seems to be a past practice by the board. And I just I
don't I being that it's such a it's such a it impacts such a small amount of people and it's such a nominal amount of money. It's in here when we talk about numbers in the millions, right? If $200 might not might sound like much, but like you know when you're a parent who's paying for tuition and you know you're
and you're an educator, uh that $200 isn't necessarily that small. Well, it may not be a lot $138 million budget, but it is a lot for an individual family depending on how many kids they have. And so so that's why I think I I would personally continue with the past practice if we my question is if we need
to amend the policy. I don't think I I don't I don't see why you do because I don't think it stands in conflict with the current policy. The current policy says it's 5%. But you're basically saying by resolution that that you're creating this you're creating a carveout that you're going to treat this other group differently. So I mean it's up to
you. I mean if you can vote I agree with that. That's what we that was the spirit of our conversation. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. So then we can vote on that and and I don't want to tell you what you perceive to be a violation. Right. Because I mean if the board's like you know it's a violation of the policy then that's fine. When we have such questions we
usually ask. Yeah. Appreciate. Right. So, yep. No, we we actually we spent a lot of time talking about this because frankly I don't having all these other these rules and legacy things like it's it's harder for us, but I just figure it's it's it's the right thing to do. The spirit of this whole change was to
treat our staff make our staff feel really respected and it seems counterintuitive to then to then make signal out five or 10 and say not for you and they're and they've been here longer, you know. So it's so so then I think I think we've resolved it and we
can go ahead and vote on it as written and then later on we you do the other resolution we're good. So procedurally we're good substantively we're good assuming everyone votes right. Okay let's um thank you for that. Um and was there any discussion or concerns about
the 2627 calendar? Just just what was the comment about? Oh, you know what? July 12th. Let's go back. Yeah. You know what? Are we are you opening conversation? What was that on the box?
It had July 112 on the same date. So, it was just a type. Okay. Yeah. I'm sorry. Did you are you opening conversation about the school calendar? I I was just saying were there was there any anything about it? No. Great. So So yeah, there is something that I want to call out to
you all and I'm not sure if that would give I want to make don't want to make assumptions that it was shared with you. So there were a couple there were a couple models of this calendar and we have a little bit of an anomaly here because our calendar committee typically forwards a recommendation, right? That's been the way it's been done here for quite some time. actually had a funny
conversation with Dan Fishbine about this not long ago because I complimented him that I thought it was a good process and he was like, "Oh, I I inherited that. I was I was I was told that that's how it gets done." Um, so uh so but I think it's great because it's it's an inclusive process. You're using
representatives from various groups, right? So um I think and and it creates stability in the calendar. Um so they've had some really interesting recommendations. They're actually a pretty forward-thinking group. But um one of the challenges that we were
having is that uh a previous the version of the calendar that the calendar committee put forth actually had us ending um a couple days before and having graduation I believe if I'm not mistaken it was on the 18th and uh and that was creating a squeeze for us. And
I'm I'm sorry on my notes here. Friday they were going to have graduation. No, no, sorry. The graduation was going to be on a Thursday and then the staff last day was going to be the 18th. Am I saying this correctly? Because that on a Friday. Yeah. That's Junth, right? That makes sense.
Okay. Thank you. Yes. But we were but we were Do you remember what the driver was in the change of the day? 29th week was prom and then finals within that final
So ending right on Friday and I was told that students all go to Yeah. you know and and and and I remember the other detail the other detail was that the faculty last day graduation was going to the last day of
school was going to be the 17th because the 18th was the honor honor was honoring Junth. Yeah. But that would have meant that the staff's last day would have to be they'd have to come back on that Monday the 21st which I'm sure Mrs. Handy will will share teachers I'm sure would not be very enthusiastic
about that. So what we decided to do was make a couple of small minor adjustments that would that would add some time to the calendar to get to have some movement. So those adjustments were we've heard from folks that they want to see an extension of February break. So
we added a day back to February. So it's not a full week but we that we are being responsive to the community. Right. A little more time in February. So it's a half day on Friday and then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday for students on the Wednesday. Yeah. Yep. And then the other
the other item, let me see. Look at this. Make sure I'm speaking accurately, was that we were using uh in this on the prior calendar, the spring break was going to land on March 22nd because we were going to leverage Good Friday to save a day, but that was
also very early and whenever, in my experience as superintendent, when we have spring break too early, folks generally don't love that. So we decided to push that back one week and that then added another day at the end of the year. So that put us for graduation on the 22nd and I understand
that we do we only do graduation here Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. That's it. So I'm not we're not messing with that. Not messing with that. You don't want to mess with that. And uh and and and again as I said before my experience um and having been a teacher myself, we want to
make sure that the teacher's last day is in fact right after the last day for the kids. So it satisfies both requirements and it's not too too late there. No. And if if we go back to the parameters that the board set years ago, our end we
would aim to end and have graduation no later than the 22nd June. So kudos to you. Okay. So, but I but I want to call this out because I my those were my recommendations, but knowing the the sanctity of the calendar committee, I
sent it back to the calendar committee for review and there was there was a there was limited availability or there was limited engagement from that. So, this was a little bit of a change from the last actually. I'm sorry, I didn't send it back to the calendar committee, but I know that there were um I'm sorry,
I don't remember the sequence of events, but the point being that I'm bringing this to you with but this is not the final version from the calendar committee. I made a couple I made those additional I recommended those additional changes beyond it. I don't think anybody from the calendar committee would object other than some folks who maybe don't want to go quite
as late, but I don't think any teachers would object to not having to come back on a random Monday. And I don't think a lot of our parents or families are objecting to an extra day over February break nor a slightly later spring break and it's two years from now.
No. Well, this is two 27. Well, are you consider No, this is 26 27. So we can have we have a whole year to Are you concerned the 18th of June is off and one full day on Monday and half
day? Uh if I if I remember correctly, the way that it would tie up is that that would actually fit pretty well with finals and then those last two day of schools are really more closeout days. There's usually like a flexible testing day. Um so I don't I don't know that that's necess I mean yes, am I concerned about having a three-day weekend for the
last two days of school? Yes, I wouldn't prefer that. Um but the Junth observation is something that still is fairly new. Um just it was just a few years ago that we've introduced that and it does add a little bit of a curveball to the end of the year.
There's an extra day in um August for at home I mean a virtual workday on test on taking for faculty to do testing because it's three days in August which is a more than this is the way the calendar fall. Oh, so yeah, that that we've made
that change in a I think we made that change to the next year's calendar first and that was because contractually the REA we were we there was a PD day that the REA has in their contract that we weren't using and uh but we were observing that people were feeling a lot
of frustration with all the training they have to do like all the all the video training. Yeah. So we figured like so we figured just to just to help people make the con connection between the fact that we're not using all their PD days and the virtual days. We made it a virtual learning day but we don't
really take attendance that day. It's just really it's an earmarked day for folks that they're supposed to do their training. But if they want to do it at another time they can do that but we don't take attendance. That's really it's a it's just memorializing the calendar but it's not an actual mandatory show up day. But we do but we do but we but it does help us to to
place more emphasis on the fact that the that faculty should get their training done should have a lot of their training done by the start of school. It looks good. Okay. So we'll go ahead and um let me see. We have a I moved it. We have a second.
Okay. Motion by Miss Broen. Second by Miss McCalli. Mr. Donnie. Yes. Miss Handy. Yes. Mi, Mr. McMouth, yes. M. Broen, yes. 5 Z. Okay. Uh, C. Curriculum and
instruction. Uh, we only are um moving field trips. Uh, so I I move or Miss Bro, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Did we already do attendance at conferences? Yes. Yes, we did. Okay. Just a clarification, there was an error. We had we had already approved uh Dr.
Fenwick's uh PD. Some people noticed that there was a December PD. Yeah, that was a that was a software error, a procedural error. It was produced a second time that was authorized back then. I wonder I wondered about that. Thank you. And yeah, I don't think I got an answer
to my questions uh today. So, we sent them out fairly last minute. I was without my with Miss Papa Michael's at her son's graduation today. I know. I know. Putting that in front of us. Uh okay.
Okay. So, curriculum instruction. Um, I move curriculum instruction. Moved by Miss Bogen. Second. Second. Miss McCalli. Mr. Donnie. Yes. Miss Handy. Yes. Miss McCalli. Mr. McMood. Yes. M.
Broen. Yes. Zero. Thank you. Okay. Human resources. Is this an increase of these rates increase from last year? No. There. No. No increase. Okay. Um, before we get into human resources,
Mrs. Murphy, I think you had an adjustment to item four. Four being IV. Um, yes. Uh, no. Uh, under resignations item six. So, uh, Lenny
Kamacho lunchroom will be staying on. So, I just need to strike that resignation. thisations. My apologies. My my brain reversed the numbers. Yes, it's not four. It's six. Page 12. Oh, okay. Oh,
yeah. Yeah, they got it. So, strike strike that. She is no longer resigning. Thank you, buddy, for staying on with us. Great. So, um would someone like to move human resources?
I move human resources. I'll second. [Music] Yes. Well, just Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I just want to um So, uh we have two um people in the audience who have been
very waiting patiently. So, we're just um appointing Lauren Carr as uh Treval principal and welcoming Jen Perry as director of school counseling. K12. And we do have one retiree
um who will come uh to the board at another time maybe so that we could celebrate. Um and that and uh that is uh Darian um Destin is that uh Buckler a grade two
at Travel 22 years. So um thank you for serving serving the district. Okay, I think now we can go ahead and vote. Yes, Miss Sandy. Yes, Miss McCalli. Yes,
Mr. McMood. Yes, Mr. Broen. Yes. So, congratulations. [Laughter] You can go home if you want. Waiting patiently. Um just going through the calendar and
thank you um Jamie for all your work. This is um you know you and your team um this is and of course all the interviewing and everything. It's um and the principles and everything. So thank you to all.
getting good. Thank you. I just wanted to say I'm trying to find it. Aaron Burn who just hire approved now to be a guidance counselor at the high school. She's a just school
psychologist. She is um a graduate of GW and Richard High School. So, I'm always nice to see our students become one of us. Interesting. She's been here as a lead replacement two years. For two years and
now I'm glad to see that. She's lovely. I taught. Okay. So, we're going to move on to uh finance. If I can uh I'd like to pull out nine for a separate billing
the transportation agreement with ES6. Okay. And also for U E one second I just want to make sure I got that right E9. Yeah. Just for a separate vote on
that rate and for E19 uh approval for tuition rates uh do we have it correct when we talk about reach transitional and reach uh so E19
yeah E19 page 26 okay so on page 26 on top it says out of district and staff members children And then on the left it says we tal this is what we talked about before, right? Yeah. Rates the So that that's Yeah, we we
talked about that earlier. I thought you were talking about that earlier, but go ahead. So I'm So I think our conclusion our conclusion was that the before we because I I know where you're going with this. The board actually already authorized this and authorized it correctly and the and and this was just an attempt to be thorough and put it all
together, but the way that it's structured here is actually not an accurate reflection of what the way it was supposed to be structured. So the way the board authorized this back and I want to say was it January, Mr. Matthews? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So, so then, so, um, I think we need to
probably read into the record that we're going to withdraw that component because it's actually not consistent with the rate structure the way that we have it currently. So, thank you for catching that, Mr. Donnie. I appreciate that. Is this the hour? Is this the hourly rate? No, so just rates. So we are just we are
just tableabling or withdrawing tuition rate for today's agenda for reach uh that that that's it just for the reach program. Correct. So so I I I'll just do it I'll just I'll read it into the record. Okay. Just this so so so Mr.
Mr. Matthews, if you can please note in the record that I'm withdrawing my recommendation of E 19 pertaining to reach
transitional K4's Rididgewood resident and reach transitional K4's Ridgewood non-resident. the remainder of that recommendation stands because I think there were three columns there. Resident, staff, and
non-resident. Yeah. So instead of two two rows, it's three columns. Yeah. Yeah. And and we did look at it and it it does it would actually this is actually wrong. So B19 the reach transitional K4s bridge with resident
reach transitional pay fors with non-resident. You're withdrawing those I'm I am withdrawing those that portion of 199 but the rest stands. Got it. I have a qu I have a question on
22 approval student activity fee. Oh, he's pulling it that Oh, some Oh, no. Is that that's a flat fee if you participate in one club or one sport in multiple ones? It's only
one fee. That is we've saved 40 years. That was my understanding. Yes. Okay. Right. Because on Skyward you can do multiple activities. That's was my understanding but it was brought to my attention and I did look at it myself for my own family. It's identified in
the billing part, not as an activity fee. In my daughter's cases, it says soccer fee, not activity fee. And I've only paid that one. So, I knew it was just a oneshot deal. But maybe we just need it was brought to my attention today that
maybe we need to look at the ver the way it's reflected to say activity fee, not and I don't know if it pertains hockey says hockey. I don't know that. I only know from soccer. It says soccer. Maybe they're identifying the activity
that the students are in. But if you have five. Yeah, that's true. You raised a good point and it's from personal experience. I swore I had paid the student activity fee for my daughter and then I got noticed that for I don't know one club and she's done like two or
three things that I hadn't. Now I did not go back and double check. I just paid it but I should really go back and look. So it it could be that there's a snafu right in the system in some way. So we should probably just I'll check I'll check my records also just to make sure that I have a note here to check language. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It
shows where they do the billing within Skyward. That's where track. That's Rev track, right? Yeah. Rev, right? Yeah. Great. Looks like just 24 separating from the stat.
Okay. So, we're pulling we're we're not pulling. We're just we're we're just taking we're separating E E9. We've made the adjustment to E19 and we are separate voting on E24.
Correct. Okay. Do we have that? So, did did somebody move finance? Was that me or someone else? No. No one. Okay. So I move finance with those adjustments that we just talked about. Okay. Okay. There's second. I'll second
it. Second by Mr. Mai. So finance has been moved by M. Broen. Second by Maui. Uh Handy, I'm sorry. I apologize. Um we're separating uh finance 24 and and D9 finance number nine. Then
the adjustment to E19. Uh before we vote though, um I'd like to just read into the record the um donations and also um just for the public, we are accepting
some grants and that's always a positive in the district. So, but for the donations, uh Travel Home and School Association, $5,000 gift in kind of electrical um electrical work for the stage at Trell Elementary School. Dad's
Night 2025, $55,000, a gift in kind, lighting at the BF auditorium. Uh Ridgewood High School Alumni Association, $2500 gift in kind of landscaping. It's
a survey for um um of the property, but it's really um to put some bench um in the front of the school. Ridgewood High School's boys tennis uh program
$1,399 a gift in kind of a ball machine. Girl um scout troop 98019 $125 gift in kind of a tree for Willard Elementary School. Deca
$652.38 a gift in kind of blazers for the high school DECA members. Somerville Home and School Association $1,584 gift in kind of uh staff t-shirts to be worn on Fridays and other school
events. Uh, Somerville Home and School Association, $6,416 to be used to pay for student clubs for the 2526 school year. Boys, RHS boys lacrosse,
$1,219.30 to be used to pay for buses to Ruter Stadium. And then we have six donations um for scholarship for the class of uh 1972 a soble scholarship. So thank you
to all the generous donors and as I said we are accepting uh some uh grants and they are listed on the agenda and um you know in the last couple years I don't think I've ever seen as many grants
coming through to the district. So, um, thank you for the work that gets, um, behind all that. All right, I think, um, we're ready to vote on all and then we'll come we'll circle back for E9 and E24,
Mr. Donnie. Yes, and I echo uh, Miss Broen's statement about the grants that especially the CRE three grant like $200,000. So, that's a lot of money. Thank you, Miss Sandy. Yes, Miss McCall. Yes. Mm.
Yes. Mroga. Yes. Okay. Well, let's do E9, which is approval um transportation agreement through Essex Regional Educational Services Commission. Yes. So, just my question on this is uh
I assume we didn't get the information on the uh courtesy busing numbers yet, right? Not yet. Uh this was renewed at the uh CPI index of 3.57 our courtesy bus. No, we we're
still we're still going through that that that action right now. So I'm I'm going to abstain from this one until we have those first. If you approve the route, do does it mean you have to where we're approving contracts? Yeah. Right. Proving the the
actual roof. If you pull a route, should it not materialize? Does that create a problem? I'm just wondering does the so the background finance committee on Monday uh these came up and the question that we asked was we'd like to just
understand what is the number costing us for courtesy busing. I'm not saying we're going to make any changes, but we courtesy bus about 270 students that do not need to be bus 270 students. So to be not making I'm not saying we're
we need to change anything, but I'd like some of those are are roots that were deemed a long time ago not safe walking routes. So I I don't know if you call it hazardous or whatever, but for a long time, but I'm
not saying it's right. Maybe everything stays the same, but I just want to understand like of the 1.2 million contract, is that 200k? Is that 30K? Is that 500k? We had that order. We did talk about that and and it's exactly what you're saying, what we're all
saying. Um my sense was that that is a uh what we can get that number and I agree because I' I'd like to see it as well. I think that there's a Julie Ohana was saying there's a lot a lot more that goes into it as well. So that might be a
longer conversation, but um you know, let me ask you the question. If in fact we've got two weeks until our next meeting on June 2nd, do is there a good possibility that you'd have a clear
information and do you need to do this tonight or could we wait to June 2nd? You can actually wait till a later date. But even we were to accept it, we could still go out to quote or go out to another bid process for these same
routes. So, she took the existing rust we have right now for 2425. We're trying to find the actual um proposal back from Shellastic, but um no, it it can wait. We don't have to do it right now. So, what if what if we waited to the second? We can do that. That's fine. I'm not
saying not to, but let me just provide some context. Okay. So, you may recall in some of my conversations with you when we talked about the budget process and we were trying to like get a picture of where we were budgetarily. something that we've been our our team had been our folks who
have been responsible for transportation have been alerting us that they're concerned that as I said earlier in the conversation per the district goals and this is why I included that line in the district goals about busing equity that there has been a concern that we are
providing busing to more folks than we are legally obligated to. The piece that we're trying to put together is because there's just because it's it's all this is all based off of a map and we don't really have very strong software for this right now. So, it's hand calculated. But but the these hand hand
kind of plotted maps that our team had had had done in the past would seem to indicate that there are pockets of the town that were providing transportation that we don't need that we don't need to. Where we left it last in the budget process and we were talking about the savings we're finding in other places.
um and I don't recall there's a lot of conversations there but where I got com where I kind of landed at was um that for the time being this was a complicated thing to try to uh unravel and figure out and even if we did
confirm that there were folks who were getting transportation that would not necessarily fit the need fit the definition of a hazardous route or that our policy was wrong. If for f for our community members and our stakeholders to lose access to busing without some
other plan to have give them like at least a paid subscription option would probably go over quite poorly and would and could potentially uh have some you know just really create some upset that it wasn't fully necessary. So the reason that I was comfortable moving forward
here is that being transparent about the fact that I'm concerned that we that that that we are overextending ourselves and that money might be better ded somewhere else. But until I can share recommendation I'm sorry I think my battery is dying here. Can we just get me another microphone
please? Thank you M. Thank you Mr. Donnie. I appreciate that. Um I think we need to have a I think we need to have coherence and clarity around how like what to what extent do we have discretion regarding these routes. To what extent is that
responsible and then assuming that it is responsible to what extent can we provide parents with sufficient time to plan and ideally an alternative for that transportation. So so I just want you to know that that's why it is on the agenda here and now. I also in the past I have
gotten burned with uh with bus routes and having to rebid bus routes because the closer you get to the because they people book them up and they book their contracts and if people are if the bus companies are all obligated if they've all made their commitments and you're trying to bid after that you're going to
get it's just like bidding construction work. If you bid too late you get exorbitant rates. Right now our rate is not terrible. Um, so I just I I would just be just want to be eyes wide open. Um, I I don't I don't know that we're going to have that much more clarity by
June 2nd and we're exposing ourselves to a little risk and not locking it in. So, as long as you're comfortable with that, I don't think it's detrimental to wait, but I don't know that we're I'm not going to I don't anticipate having a solution for a subscription option for No, no, I I'm not asking for a solution.
I was just the ask on the Monday finance meeting was a very simple ask. those students that we are courtesy busing how much is that costing us of that 1.2 That's it. I just wanted a number. But my experience when you see when you hear
270 go, "Oh my gosh." I think a substantial part number of those 270 are the students that live on the other side of Route 17 that go to BF because if you look well and right and you know but I
think Haw could be whatever our distance is but I know BF is not. So, but you know to walk over the highway is I think the historic I've my children have been in school here since 8 1986 and they went to Haw and BF and they were bus
from the neighborhood where we lived which is on the other side of 17 and there's no sidewalks. It's over 17. There's a lot of no sidewalks on Lynwood and everything else. So I think as as egregious or how large numbers of the
270 I think a great number them are the children going to be up from the other side of 17. If it is if it is that if it is other side of 17 then I would question u the assessment that it's safe route right so I'm not I would go back and so right now I think what I'm
hearing is 270 where the route is safe but less than two miles but if it is on the other side of 17 then I would actually I would be the first one to question how are we determining that route is safe to walk I agree with you I think that's the question I think the question is how do you ident how do you
define courtesy busing versus busing that we're required to do by law. I I personally think it is a I I agree on one sense. I would love to know just what that number is of the 1.2 million how much of that is something that legally we're not required to do. I think that's an important piece of
information for me that at this point in time without much more context and other explanation I don't know that I would be comfortable making a decision based just on that. Um, and I have no problem putting it off till June 2nd to for a
vote. So long as we are not in any way um, shooting ourselves in the foot by uh, not awarding this contract tonight, not losing time and then costing us more money. I think that's my question. This is it's two weeks. Do do you anticipate that being an issue, Mr. Matthews? Two
weeks. It's it's to Essex regional. There's no there's no expiration date on it on its offer right here. They're expecting us to move pretty quick. It came into us in March, but it's 13 pages and there's no expiration date. And I know I know Miss Alfo pretty good. She will she will definitely let us go to June. All right. Because to be clear,
you your team was not able to to finalize those numbers. Right. Right. You don't have not for the courtesy bus. So then so then the board members can vote in a more informed way if we wait till June second. This is safe for till June. Okay. So then so then so thanks for hearing that out. Um, let's So then, so if you're all comfortable, then I'll
we'll I we'll we'll table this table this resolution for June or I'll I'll I'll I'll read into the record that we'll remove this recommendation for the time being. All right. And um so Mr. Matthews, if you could just please let the record reflect that I'm removing my recommendation for
E9, transportation agreement through the Essex Regional Education Service Commission from this agenda. And then additionally with the intention of reintroducing it with supporting with with data that supports the board members inquiries uh at the June 2nd
meeting. Got it. Okay. So um E24 was also asked. So we'll um move it and second it and then open it up for any discussion. So before we move it a question on that one because this the
the increases were not highlighted in the finance committee meeting on Monday. Um if you look at the rates I mean some of them are over a 10% increase. So is there a reason we're accepting these increases? I mean if you for the year for the year
it's $1,000 more increase right for a fee not to exceed 63,000 correct so even if their rates are higher the the overall fee is so we have it capped to yes no more not to exceed 63,000 last year it
was 62,000 yeah so I just just so if if we reach that cap they are working for free at that That's a serious question. No, it is a serious question. Yeah, they it would be their responsibility to notify us if
they think that they need to be approved beyond that. But they're saying average amount, how much have we spent every year for on the cap, then the cap doesn't matter. We're Yeah, we're under I understand. Yes. So I I I'm shoot Yeah. I don't want
to I don't want to just make So this is this is an hourly rate if needed. So we call them in for a special service to do a special investigation on whatever that may come up from a inquiry or a concern. Then they would charge us these this additional rates. I know like right now
we use them all the time for just general questions and we don't get a bill and but if you my my point is if you look at like staff accountants a $10 increase is about 10% or maybe even more. So that's a pretty high
increase. So is that I don't think that's in line with our other providers, right? Terms of the percent being increased in terms of hourly rate. I think my my suggestion is hourly rates if needed. If they came to us for anything, but we came to them, they
would give us a proposal. We would come to the board and say this is over and above beyond the contract terms and we would come to you and give you an explanation that we made a request for these services. We want to have them do this investigation and we'd come to you and show you what it is before we go ahead and authorize it. Yeah. Yeah. But
they're going to then they will give us the rates that we approved. But whereas if we don't approve it right now, it goes back to them and they probably have to come back down on the rates. We can approve the contract part and the rates can be uh we don't have to
approve. We don't have to approve the rates. That would be my proposed amendment. So you're you're okay with the because have we seen 10% increases in other hourly rates of our attorneys? I think you're only looking at the staff accounts
staff or even if you look at managers $15 increase is over 10%. Well, it's just 10. It's 10% or less, right? $10 on 15 over the 135 for example because now now that I'm looking
at it again so the bottom line is if we just if we don't approve the hourly rates we are approving um the auditor to do the audit for not more than $63,000. That is correct. Right. And the hourly rates, which Muhammad is making the
point that we may need to negotiate, um would be something for a separate special project, something in something something over and above or outside of the general fun request to provide a special review of certain
expenditures for the year and advise us accordingly. Right? They would use those rates right there. Okay. So set another way, these higher rates are not going to are not uh going into the $63,000 not big C. These are outside of the scope of the contract. Outside the scope of the
contract. Okay. I just wanted to make sure I was I was clear. Well, that might be what they're pay they're paying. So you get So they said if they're facing that's why they're facing the $63,000 is the $1,000 more than last year, right? Which is which is less than 10%. Right. But is probably based on
their increased hourly. But they're getting us two ways in this. If we were paying them, let's say, 25K the whole last year, now that's going to increase by another 10% under the cap. The cap doesn't really matter. We're going to Got it. We
were We were paying about 50,000 if we Well, we'll Okay. If we're okay with it, we're okay with it. I'm just asking. It seems a little high to me. So, can we should we table this one then? No, I don't think so. So, I think we ought to move ahead with the audit because we I think we want to get them in here sooner
than later. Right. They're in here now. Yeah. No, I I I'm very happy with their service. They're saying it's a very high increase. I'm not going to the um but you know, for the board's information, it would be good to know.
Um we had again a cap of 62,000 on the audit, you know, the basic service for the auditor. what it did cost us last year because I I I thought it was 58 or something, but I I don't know. What did you think it was? I mean, I'm just
guessing. I recall in the 50s and the uh in the year prior, we had paid more because we paid for some sort of an additional projection and that brought it up to like 80 and then we reduced the budgetary line down to somewhere in the ballpark of the 50s or 60 maybe. Um, so my this as I recall this is this is
about this would 60 I don't wouldn't anticipate we'd spend more than 63,000 for the all for all the entirety of the audit services and then if for some reason we wanted them to do something extraordinary that's when these other accounts would kick in. I don't see a problem to uh Mr. Mimmood's
recommendation or if a motion to just remove the hourly rate. We don't there's nothing binding us to approve those. It's just that the numbers that they for something comes up, we'll bring it to the board and you guys can approve it. Okay. All right. No, no. Or we just go back to them and say we'd like revised
rates that are lower. That too. All right. I'll work on it. Okay. So, we'll but we'll move ahead with approving the audit for 20 256 at a fee not to exceed 63,000. Is that
okay? All right. Based on previous current rates until they divide the rates 20, sorry. All right. So, we've moved and second that we can vote when you have motion by um Oh, I thought I did already. You did.
Okay. I'm just I could be wrong. Okay. Motion was second by Sorry. I think I second by Miss Andy. Getting late. All right. It's getting late. Second by
hand she Okay, it's been motion by Miss Broen, second by Miss Andy. Uh, Mr. Donnie, yes. Miss Handy, yes. Miss McCalli, yes. McMove, yes. M. Broen, yes. We have no resolutions and motions uh
not included in the consent agenda. So, we'll go to approval of bills. Mary McCalli. So I reviewed the bills and I move um approval of bills. Second move by second. Second by
Miss Roan. No. Mr. Donnie. Mr. Donnie. Y. Okay. Roll call. Mr. Donnie. Yes. Miss. Handy. Yes. Miss McCalli. Yes. Mr. McMood. Yes. M. Rogan. Yes. Board member announcements.
I I just want to congratulate uh uh Jazz in the Woods. It was wonderful. The concert was great. We have so many talented students. Um so many talented students and then the opportunity to work with a professional. Uh so it was
our and our staff. So it was wonderful. Uh, and just a reminder, I know that uh Harrison already said it was the uh choir and orchestra concert is ne is tomorrow night at Westside Presbyterian at I think 7:30. Yeah.
So, board committee reports. Uh, do we have anything that I think we really beat stuff up tonight? I I just need to remind for CPAG, right? just that they had a meet and greet today with um our new director of special programs. I understand it went very well. Um just to
remind everyone that the sensory dinner for May is May 28th at Lelay Pancake House. And uh another reminder that on June 10th at 9:30 in the morning, there will be the last CPAG meeting of the year here on third floor.
Anybody else want to report on anything? So uh we met at the facilities committee uh last week or a week before u and uh Mr. Matthews had presented four five projects for capital projects for this
year. Uh two elevators, orchard roof, um one elementary schools, multi-purpose room and or/ gym and villard boiler. Right. So at that time I had mentioned that Willard boiler and the multi-purpose rooms uh HWAC those two um
I have more questions on or I may not be comfortable with but I'm voting on the overall number. So at the facilities committee meeting uh we did talk about the multi-purpose rooms HVAC for that elementary school. So it was clarified to me that there is a plan to implement
those for across all elementary schools and uh few so we'll start with one this year and uh Rich and Glenn are included in the overall HVAC rehaul process. So those two will also be getting it this
year. So that way at the minimum all three elementary/glenn will have air conditioning in the gym/multipurpose room and the other four either um I still have to get that number like a calendar that but it is summerville is
done too summerville is also done okay right so then we will only have three more to go so those three will be made uh as part of the plan one a year or two a year something like that and it they will be gradually done. So, uh based on
that plan that it's not just randomly one school that was picked for that and those are used for multiple purposes for parent meetings, back to school night, it's not just for for gym, right? So, there are there are multiple usage of
that space. Um uh I think I'm okay with uh moving forward with that one and uh I my understanding is that the architects have go ahead to start working on the drawings or Mr. Matthews will be working with them to start working on the
drawings. So that project is is going to be a go. Um Willard boiler I still have more questions on that and we have not completely finalized that yet. So because the biggest question there is the boiler is not an issue there. The
temperature uh comfort or the temperature imbalance is the issue and replacing the boiler will not fix that. So on that project we still have to do some more research that why do we need to do that in this year or versus can we take a different project. So that's an
update from the facilities committee meeting and and I think another um piece of news that came out of um facilities is that uh our architects have gone back to the state uh to see whether there
might be reconsideration of the window projects at both Glenn and Ridge which was uh initial part of um making sure that you know our HBAC systems are installed and
and ventilation and it you know we're energy efficient. So um we're waiting on that but to be able to you because the um rod grants
um because the the projects came in uh less expensive than what we had anticipated. there's money still for those in that rod grant that maybe we can um now use it also to uh finance the
window projects or part of the window project. So I think that's pretty exciting. So basically the argument there is that single pane window replacement with a double pane window is part of the uh ventilation overall HVAC project right so that's the
argument that they are making and also when they run their univvent and there it's fresh air inlet that window work has to be redone yeah so this it'll be good news if we can uh if that moves forward I'd like to talk about the communications committee meeting two
wonderful things um with the new software for the website. Um Miss Corass has shared with us that the public can now Miss Corass is it agendas and
minutes agendas and minutes that are posted on the website are now searchable but using search terms because they're PDFs. So if someone is looking for something in the past, it's very easy for them to search on that keyword
rather than have to go to every document. And that's something very good for the public and transparency if you're looking for something, you know, that they remember but can't remember exactly when it was discussed. And number two, the fact that we're using
the a bot to answer questions that you can say where will where they they can ask questions where will they find or they can ask a question and the bot has been getting increased usage by the community as they discover it. So I think that two things that help the
community understand how to use the new website and the ease of finding documents that they may be looking for. So I want to applaud that those additions to it and Miss Cordless has to monitor these things as well. So um she
monitors and make sure the bots's answering the questions correctly. So the new uh website is very userfriendly and very well organized and branded and everything. What is our plan for uh sunsetting the old website? Do we still have content on the old website and are
we still paying that provider for a subscription fee or the software license? to Miss Corless. So not not just cache cache is local to the browser uh or local to the machine but there the old website we were able
to access or it was crawled um and indexed using two different URLs one not just Ridgewood.k12 K12 but also individual schools like GW and uh Traval every school had their own websites and
um then there was the service providers direct link uh whatever that name was school something right so if you those pages were also indexed so all of that content is still searchable and available and competes with rpsnj.org or
so. So if we are not paying to that provider um that provider should be redirecting that those URLs to RPSJ us right so we Right. So the but if we don't own a domain and if if though that
was a vendor we can send a season disease letter to them to take out our content right they cannot be keeping our content alive on their uh domains and their URL which is causing confusion for
end user if Yeah Because if if we are not paying and if we had a contractual relationship with them, we should be able to send them a CES and disease letter to take the content out and uh issue a redirect. Basically, a domain domain level redirect.
All right. Um discussion items. Actually, I have one more question for the I have a question for the policy committee based on the minutes. So um in the in your last policy is this because of are we on discussion item? No policy committee. I'm still on the committee.
We are in the committee reports, right? So, we had communication committee. So, we are on the comm in the policy committee. You guys discussed about and finalized a plan for Glenn enrollment and formalized it, right? Oh,
so yeah, Glenn's weight list process. So is do you have do you know what's the plan to publicize it uh or put that on the website and communicate it to the um Juraj residents that when will so is that
for September 2025 or is that for September 2026 the new process? I thought that um at a minimum yeah I know that um for those who were
who thought they were on the wait list too far out they were going to be getting letters being told you're not any longer that we've switched it and I thought that was going to be effective for September 25 am I correct Michelle on that
right it's get to spring. Okay. Right. But if if this is if this new policy will go into effect for students starting Glen School in September
2026, when will this new process be available online? So that way people don't if if some if I'm call if I call today and I want to wait get weight listed for 2027 or 2026 what would be the response I'll receive.
Uh Christine. No, but we need we have remote remote residence, right? Um, so the the thing we are waiting on and the reason we have not publicized is because we have to make changes to Skyward in order to handle the weight list process that Glenn needs. The IT
department has been working on that process and they think they figured it out. So that's why we're confident that we can go live with this starting with the kindergarten registration period in January of 26. So next year is already done. We use the old process. As people are calling
in, Glen School is telling them the former weight list process is no longer in process. We're going to be following a kindergarten registration process. So the plan is that as long as we know and we'll know when the MSIU mandatory student information update goes in place
this August, we'll know for sure that the Glen School process is working and at that time I can send out a communication through Glen School. Perfect. So all students, all parents will receive some sort of notification in advance for that specifies the date
when registration will open for Glen School and on that date everybody will jump in or how will that work out? So, so what'll happen is that come in September and fall, assuming all goes well, we will send a communication to our entire community plus the weight
list that Miss Malino has. And I promised I would help her with that because it's extensive and they're not going to be happy, right? So, and then come January, they will just like we advertise kindergarten registration, we will advertise Glen school registration
in the exact same way. So, I just want to understand what that way is. So once we advertise that the registration is open, will that registration open for everybody at one date and one year? Yeah, it'll be like kindergarten registration now opens
um say it I forget the exact date. Say it's like January 17th, right? Um once it's open, it's opened forever until school starts. With Glenn School, it would be open until we fill the classes. And then for each class, we have with
built within Skyward a weight list. I believe it's 25 kids of a weight list because they're trying to also get a handle on do we need to push for more classes. Okay. So, we didn't want to make it less than 25, but they're being told your
number this on the list. The beauty of using the skyward is it'll be date and timestamped so that we will have proof that these are how people came in with their registrations. Perfect. Thank you. Okay. Thank you.
All right. Um so discussion items uh revised policy regulations is listed. So this is uh just discussion of public information program and academic integrity. I had one question on academic integrity and that was on
number six using generative uh generative artificial intelligent in violation of school policy. So I'm just wondering we I know you're working on the policy. So it was a catchall so that it acknowledged that
AI is present in the schools and that it's um individual at the moment you know per department for classroom for grade level. So we wanted to to reference it in the in the policy um but leave enough flexibility so that it can
be implemented as uh individual uh administrators and teachers think appropriate till we have a full policy is that fair Dr. Schwarz. So is the word though policy or practice? No it's it's it's school policy not to be confused
with board policy. Okay. So the idea is that schools have their own local policies which often elaborate on district policies and regulations. So they're allowed to set we'll use the term policy interchangeably but but basically school rules.
So basically, so so we're taking a bit of a minimal, not a minimalist, we're taking a we're we're we're want to overregulate generative AI. We want to make it clear via our policy and through academic integrity standards that whatever policies, practices and rules
the schools set forth regarding that would regulate the student by board policy integrity policy are responsible for adhering to those AI policies at the school level. But the idea is that phrasing it this way gives the schools
the flexibility to be a little more agile and make adjustments because they can adjust their school policy without needing board action. So each school has a written policy or is it more of a school practice? We could say school rule school rule would
be better. I think a policy to me would be it's something that's written and I could go and look at the school and that would and and it might not be written. So it's rules or practice or whatever but better ending but you know just so
something discussed I would just uh that was my only comment on that and then the public information program so on the public information program uh was were these changes reviewed by
Stesme or Matt? I don't think we did. Um, can I request that they be reviewed by Matt? Sure. Okay. Is there is there a specific part that's concerns you? No, in general because there is some it just overall it looks a little bit
inconsistent at some places. For example, in uh in B4 it talks about clearance before bulletin or items may be released to the press. But then we have a full section C that says release information to the press. So, so that's
there are two different sections or two different ways we are talking about releasing information to the press. Then in A uh in the B I'm assuming anything that is bold, it's new, right? So B4 it says the principles basically have to a
copy of the items will be sent to the public information officer for clearance before the bulletin or item may be released to the press. But five uh or number six says principal of each school will prepare submit to the
superintendent or his her design for approval. So in in six I think you are making sure here that if the superintendent is is out then there is somebody else to be approving it uh the design but in four we are limiting it to the public information officer and then
if they are out then there's no designation to the uh like a designo for approval. That's all there. Well, well, just to be clear, so yes, but the the B4 and and we'll review this
with that's fine. But B4 is related to press releases. And what that's basically saying is that it's it's clarifying that schools have really need to include the public information officer where they're releasing information to the press because that's
her responsibility to manage it. B6 focuses on the responsibility of the schools to appropriately disseminate information related to schools to the community and guardians. So two different functions, right? But
if so this is regulation, right? And if you look at original policy 9120, policy 9120 only authorizes the board president and the superintendent to release any information to the press. So the principles or the public information officer is not authorized to release any information to the press as
per the policy 9120. So we have a policy 9120 and we have this is a regulation 9120 that we are this is not even uh so you're saying you believe they're in conflict with each other. Yeah. If can't we fix it by taking pol So we could
amend policy 9120 to say sup or president or superintendent and or his his or her designate which would then be right. So we could I think eventually so let me so a superintendent can always designate somebody but eventually
anything that is released to the press officially either the board president or the superintendent have to own it. Have a what I'm sorry say again. They have to own it. Like have to own it. Okay. Yeah. It's they cannot say that, hey, one of my staff members did that for the for
the press. When it comes to press, no, I hear exactly what you're saying. I I think so for the next policy meeting, I think we should just pull out policy 9120 and make sure it's consistent with regulation 9120 and make sure that it that your your point's well taken, right? So that's fine. that's just on
the agenda for the is that whenever in the past I've had to do something with the press usually um it had it was in relation to negotiations I always worked closely with the public information officer so
it was never done in and and whatever the lawyer whoever was involved so right but I'm a matter of changing some of the language by practice right uh you know but I'm saying that if it president just
to release information on her but Sheila I'm saying here that if it says that the principles can release information to press by consulting public information officer that contradicts because principles cannot release to press has to be through superintendent but don't
the principles um release information to the public um if there's an incident at the school I mean we see that all the time I read it differently And I read it differently than you do. I read it I if I see it a copy. So if a principal has
something that they want to release to the press of of interest, they send it to the public information officer for clearance before. So it it there is a process to make sure that a principal doesn't do anything independent of, you
know. Yeah. I just want to make sure it's it's in line with our uh policy. I think it's a good idea to put the regulation and the policy next to each other and make sure they're consistent. Yes. Yeah. We'll give it an additional review on that point. Right. Okay. And then um then I'm just looking at some
changes and so the next highlighted portion is so the uh next point here is E3 where we are making change. So E3 where we have Ridgewood village related groups. So
these are not school related groups. So these are not HSAs. So these are not vendors publicized by HSAs. Right. So these are ridgewood village related group a recreation department or library. So in that so this language came from Matt Jacobi where he said
suggested distribution on behalf of Ridgewood village may not include advertisements endorsements or reference to vendors and now policy committee is recommending to remove that. So I just wanted to understand the rationale for that. Why are we trying to allow
um references or advertisements, endorsements or references for the flyers that come from the village, not from HSAs, not from uh district. So I can just tell you what my thinking is and I we talked about it for a little bit and then Mary Lou, Dr. Schwarz, jump
in, but um I I I first of all by removing that language, it's certainly not saying that particularly endorsements, you know, are something that would necessarily be distributed. I think because I after you know I reread this and I think the intent of this is
to streamline the process of when for example when the library is running a program let's say um they're running a program on fossils or rocks or something that would be of interest to people in the community but that program is not being run by the library but by a
vendor. Um, and so you could argue that that's an advertisement for the vendor, but it is of interest to our community. So that's something rather than um hamstringing uh or or bogging up the works of uh for the people who have to
um review these flyers and approve them or not approve them. This way it kind of frees them up to get those things out that our community wants to have information of and is interested in um either through the recreation department or through the library and then they can
just go ahead and do it. What it it does not do in my view is open up or change essentially the um policy that we have which is that we are not for example if I decide to if somebody decides to open
up you know a tutoring business for example okay that flyer in and of itself is not something that we would necessarily approve that's how I understand this policy to read that doesn't change so it's not this bold or bald advertise ments. It's it's more
when a service is being provided through an already vetted frankly a community partner like the recreation department or the library and they're offering something that we can then push that out which is considered a benefit to the community. Right? So um if I may the
library may have a different um standard of picking a vendor versus say for example our guidance department. So I've not seen our guidance department promoting any SAT prep courses um ever. Right? So they don't they don't promote
a specific vendor for essay writing or for SAT preparation. Our school never promotes any specific vendor for those type of things because there can be multiple u institutions that are doing um the uh coaching or SAT preparation,
essay writing preparation, college counseling, all of those. But at the library we often have speakers who come in and they they have a speaker series. They they will just come in there. They'll talk about it that what should you um take care when writing college
essays and that vendor is basically essentially going there to gain business and to to for advertising. Right. Yeah. But they do the same thing at the HSAs. I mean, I can just tell you when I was at the HSA, we would have vendors or or individuals
come to us and say, I would like to do uh there was one guy in particular who wrote a book who wanted to talk about what your college essay would look like and it was free and it was a service and so the HSA sponsored it and it was something that was done. I think that by putting it out there and giving people
the option to choose to attend something or not um and is not the same as promoting that business. So in that case um we should have an option when when we are putting these flyer if I am a
provider of SAT classes right so I'm a in suppose another sarabani a duplicate of sarabani is a SAT math tutor and when I see get this newsletter I'm a reju resident I receive this newsletter circulated from reju public schools that
shows um if you want SAT writing classes go to this uh seminar and attend that I should have an option to advertise or or participate in the same with the same equity. I'm a resident. So, how we need to list how to get listed on this
Ridgewood's bulletin board or uh for this. So, I need access to how to get listed that these steps should be listed on our website for any type of flyers that we are promoting. Can I finish? I'm sorry. Yeah, of course. any type of flyers that we are we are promoting
whether it's through HSA through our uh our library partnership or through our newsletter directly uh at the bottom of these flyers we should have clear instructions that would you want to be do you want to be listed in these flyers click here for
instructions where I can click on I can see what are the requirements to be listed what are the requirements for my flyer to be added there are a lot of people who run robotics classes here There are a lot of people who run there are a lot of afterchool student activities that RJwood residents run. So
if we are promoting one or two, we should have a clear guideline for anybody else. how can they get listed in this catalog that is being pushed to Reju residents um as part of uh that and and on top this this came this specific
line came from Matt that we should not be advertising um we should not be including any village owned advertisements endorsement of reference vendors so this line came from him so if we are removing it I think we should get it reviewed from him I agree that we should definitely have it reviewed from
him um I view the way we I view it very differently than you do and um I think we can go back to policy we can discuss a little bit more. My understanding was that by removing this language we were making it a lot easier for Christine and Lucy to to get things out. Um I view promoting differently
than you do and advertising differently than you do. And I think that we can go back, maybe have Matt look at it, discuss it again in policy, and then bring it back for discussion because you make you make good points. We may we just have to figure out what we want to do. And I'm fine if if you think that
it's it's in community's best interest when we are promoting these things. I'm all for it. But then give everybody an equal chance. It should not be I need to have a contact in HSA. I need to have a contact and with I need to know the system because somehow I know the system
right it the system should be well explained to everybody who wants to participate in that system. So it should not be somebody make a phone call that hey how can I get listed should not be an opaque thing not affiliated yeah disclaimer at the bottom that this
is not that's the next point that's that's our next change but I mean but that that would include what you're talking about so no I'm not talking about disclaimer I'm talking about No but if you have a vendor that that's not
somebody that the school district has approved and and authorized to do it. You have that disclaimer at the bottom, right? So that would allow for other opening it up to other vendors. Right? So that's that's what I want to understand. How do we how is it opening?
So if we are including library ones, then we just need instruction to the libraries page that should show anybody how can they do their seminar at the library and how can get they get listed in Ridgewood's newsletter. So you're saying that if we if we should tell
people how to go to the library to do it however we want to get listed like if we are promoting so it should the in if the those instructions are not clear how are we picking so library conducts 200 programs a month hundreds of programs a month how are we picking specific
programs I don't think I don't think we pick I think they may ask us to promote it they they send them to us the ones they think would be, you know, of an interest to our community and the students
because as a home and school president when I was president, we would receive something. They would always work through the home and school for each particular school they wanted to. I know now we're standardizing it through the backpack, but I think that most of the vendors that know schools know that you
go through the, you know, PTA or the home and school, they I think they know that path. But I, you know, I don't think it's terrible to say. I don't know where we would put it, but I'm sure any
mic a lot tonight. Um, at the top, if you go to the virtual backpack, at the very top, it says if you're interested in putting a flyer into the virtual backpack to email me. Okay, perfect. And if it's library, if it's library, can we include libraries contact information?
Um, I don't see why not. I'm working a lot with Lori Stybecker there and we can work all that out without a problem. They want to work very closely with us, but they also understand there are limits. So, she's been great. Right. So as long as there is contact information that if they if anybody wants to get
listed there and so one part is one part is to contact you and are you also clarifying there the requirements? They're not yet because they weren't approved yet. So I didn't update anything right now it just says to email me. Can we just bring that back to policy because I don't want the
responsibility of having to tell you know 500 tutors where they need to go to advertise with another another uh organization in town. And the same thing. So I I understand what Sarab's saying, but but I you know, so I think we need to flush it out or argue it out a little. I think there's always going
to be gray areas, but I agree with talking. I I I would like to streamline it if we can. How about the ones that are that we are including without like if we are including ourselves? So library is one part, right? Library is one part, but there
are flyers that are sent directly to us. So for those can we clarify our our criteria and the contact information? I thought so I thought that we did clarify our criteria on online and I'm saying online for an FAQ. You're talking about creating an
FAQ FAQ. Sure. How do I get listed my how do I get my flyer listed there? Right. Do you want to advertise? Yeah. I just think we need to be careful about promoting a community event rather than advertising. Those I I view them as two very different things. I'm just saying
whatever we are approving, whatever we are approving, whatever we are approving and whatever we are including, if that criteria is listed in black and white that this is our criteria and if you want to get your flyer listed, please reach out to us. But sometimes if you're
so specific if you it can create I think problems if you say you have to have this and then somebody we can't think of every possibility that someone may who may want us to post something is asking to do so if we don't specify that are we
bound to list their I'm just worried about yeah I mean I I agree with you I think I think that I I I think we should take it back to policy Um, okay. And then we'll up a little bit if that's all right. We can talk with you about it before. The next one I have
is, so there was this number four that was strikeed out. Material will post within 3 weeks of the event and no more than two weeks in a row. So what was the original rationale for this and uh why did we remove it? I I can tell you we
had a conversation for example about um I'm going to think about Jamberee, right? So there's a lot of things where 3 weeks is just simply too soon that I mean even the Wizards, okay, when we advertise the Wizards for Federated, we start telling people that they're going
to come in November to put the uh end December to put the tickets up for sale in January for something that happens at the end of February or March. And I think for planning purposes, 3 weeks is too um it becomes too restrictive. And
we have some pretty big and quite frankly they're fundraising events for the district because when you talk about the Wizards or Jamberee um those are the only two I can think of right now. It is to our benefit to give them as much leeway as possible um super
science. So so I think it was just too restrictive and and we did have a lot of conversations I remember about um those things. We have a lot of, and this is why I think we should go back to policy, and I appreciate that you're raising it all so that we can revisit it again at
the next one. We have a lot of unique um unique opportunities in this district to promote things and also unique activities that you just don't find anywhere else, right? But they all come with their own idiosyncrasies that we need to honor um in our policy so that
we can continue the good work that they do. Right? That's how I view it. Right? So this is this is not a clause that I added and I'm not married to this cloud, right? So I'm just asking a question that Right. Yeah. giving you the So So do you see a scenario where um so you
picked three or four specific examples where you would want to list start them early 3 months or four months. So what restricts any other event to be listed three months? So if there's no criteria but this is where discretion comes in, right? So then, so then there's the
discretion where, you know, whoever's looking at it, Lucy or Christine or, you know, can look at it and say, you know what, it's unnecessary and we don't have room and we're not going to do it. And at the end of the day, and if there isn't language in here that says that the superintendent's office has um the discretion to say yay or nay, then we
should put it in there, right? But at the end of the day, the Ridgewood Public Schools owns this, right? So if they don't want to put something in within X number of time, then we don't because it's a favor. No one's paying us to do it. And if I could add one more thing,
the other big difference is the flyers pre-Christine used to go out as separate emails to our community. We don't do that anymore. They're stored on a web page and the community gets a link once a week from the schools in
their ENUS and then once a month from me in the we are maroon. So we're not sending. So think about it. If people were asking us to send those flyers for five weeks in a row, that was five emails. Now it all of them are together in one email
and then stored in one place. So it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter anymore that we store them longer. Do we want something up for a year? No. Are they not going out in the U summary of uh summary? Only the community level ones are. So there's a if you could look
at I'll give you an example. If you go to Trell's page at your leisure, go to their virtual backpack, you will be shocked at the number of flyers that are on their page because their HSA happens to put everything into a flyer. So, we've
removed a vast number of flyers by using the backpack. So, yes, we send those out, but those our board meetings are once a month and it only contains the flyers that are still relevant for an upcoming event. So we don't have the volume we used to have. Okay. So they
are going out in three emails. One is we are maroons and the two most months we have one or two board meeting summary. Right. So board meeting summary and we are maroons. Correct. So those flyers are still and everything else is just one button link that says virtual backpack on the ene. Okay. So on that
one um so here we have uh removed the requirement which says u the preferred type of distribution is electronic. If backpacking is necessary it is the organization's responsibility to copy and divide in bundles the flyer
and distribute the buildings. So why are we removing this onus or responsibility from the organization and why are we taking it on? because that was an old thing that referred to literal flyers in literal backpacks, right? So, we don't do that anymore. So,
again, the preferred type is electronic if backpacking is necessary. So, it's just a it's just an insurance, right? We are saying the preferred type of distribution is electronic. If backpacking is necessary, it is the organization's responsibility to copy and divide and bundles. So, this is just
I just don't think we do it anymore. I think I think it's our it's just a practice that's no longer done. That was my understanding is that it was just unnecessary now. So then we should have that we would not do it, right? Then we should just put a line or we could just take it out and it's not an
issue. I mean that's that's how I look at it. No, if you are taking if there is an organization. I suppose tomorrow Bergen community but the um election office they they just recently sent out a flyer about primaries or anybody comes out and
health department or anybody any government agency the Bergen County or state comes out and says okay this is a flyer we want you to distribute are we going to just say we will we don't do it we don't do that because it it has to be
physical they have to duplicate ate it and give it to us. No, that's we don't do that anymore. So, we scan it. So, we scan it rather than Okay. So, so maybe maybe maybe then to and we'll bring it back to policy, but to um address your concern, we put
something in. They're like, "We no longer we will no longer accept or distribute paper copies. Anything will be, you know, something along those lines. We just don't do it." I I think Mr. Donnie, one of the things that used to be individual was the um readathon and that was something that the students
had to fill out a list of names and that was something that was given out by hand and but now they've changed it and do it all electronically. So that was one of the last big things that we support because they support us and we would do
but I don't think there's too many more of that nature that really supports you know Richmond public schools. Okay. I just think that with social media and all the electronic changes there might have been more suggestions from a strame
on this. We have not revised this since 2020. So if if the either STSM or Matt can take a look at it just and um okay so then in the same in the same policy the policy committee minutes says
that there is a there were two guidelines that were not included in the revised policy that were currently being implemented. One is it cannot be on behalf of vendor. Many offerings that are of interest to families are from local vendors. So that you are
recommending to uh allow vendors, right? Well, no, that's that's the language we just discussed, which is No, that was for No, that's what that part of the minutes that you're reading refers to the removal of the of the second
sentence of sub paragraph 3 in E. That's what that's that's just that's just memorializing the decision we made. Okay? Because that was not just local vendors in the library. We don't get local vendors, right? So, but I but the intent the intent was to reflect the
decision we made in removing that language in part three. So, but is that just because of local vendors because the people who come and presented library it can be vendors from all the world. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Because I have seen vendors even from u Maryland in
that in once and then the require commitment by entity to not endorse candidates. this provision provided to be impractical and complicated. So what is the rationale there? So are we saying that if there are organization local organizations
that are endorsing candidates, we will run their flyer and put links to their website on our uh backpacks. I I don't think that was the intent at all. We had a long conversation about that. Um the idea was that we can't be responsible
for checking every click-through link. it's it's entirely too ownorous on the limited resources that we have. So, the idea is that we would we would certainly if uh not allow it if it was, you know, something that was um obvious to us or
that we could easily find, but that we're not going to put the responsibility to check every click-through link on I keep mentioning Lucy who's enjoying I hope a graduation celebration right now, but on Lucy, whoever it is that's reviewing these for removal. So, Mary, that's not how I read
it. It says, but that's the right. It's not the policy right in the minute it says require commitment by entity to not endorse candidate. So it's it's like if I am filling a yeah so if I'm completing our bid process there's a question there
that do you do business with Iran Iran and the vendor just has to check that no I don't do any business with Iran as part of the bid process. So this is a right so this is just a checkbox by the uh entity saying that they don't
participate in the political process because as part of any nonprofit cannot be endorsing candidates as a school district we cannot be promoting um if an entity is promoting candidates or endorsing candidates especially during the election times. No no I agree with
you on that and I thought we had a discussion it's a question for them. No, no. Right. And I thought we had and we'll bring it back to policy, but I thought Dr. Schwores, we had a discussion about the fact that we we have some kind of uh protection with regard to that, right? Because the idea
is not to have a you know willy-nilly endorsement of candidates. Yeah. Our primary function is not managing an like a public information system, right? Our primary function is educating kids, right? But we have communication systems and so there is a certain expectation as
as a comm having control of this powerful communication system that we use it responsibly. So we're trying to strike a balance between having appropriate amount of safeguards that are like manageable without being ownorous. the process when we started thinking about the process of tracking
of of setting up this sign off tracking it and then holding people accountable to it. Um it it that started to push into the side into the level of feeling ownorous on the basis of the fact that there was only really one or two kind of circumstances which you shared with us
of circumstances where people were were in fact engaging in vendor in in endorsing candidates and we created the catchall that for any reason the superintendent has the ability to make a determination that that that communications or the entity is problematic and they can just decide not
to. So for example, someone who an organization that we have reason to believe or have evidence has endorsed a candidate, I'm not going to I'm not going to authorize them to to distribute our network. So it's a more of a if the if the absolute rule is being absolutely
perfectly sure and fair, then then we could add that in. But with the staff that I have and the time that with the way that they're pulled, the the putting in that burden of we're going to make all these people sign this off when a lot of these folks are No, that's fine.
That's fine. As is as long as if we are saying that as as per our policy, we will not be promoting organizations that are endorsing candidates locally and then if somebody brings it to our attention, that's fine, right? So we are not so that that's okay if we are not
asking but if somebody brings to your attention that hey this is an organization that you're advertising and they are part participating in local elections or any elections and there's a red flag there then that should be entertained. I'm trying to not extend the conversation too much because I'm
sensitive to how long we're we're here, but I think there's a I was observing this and something I'm going to take back is when we struck through that one line that had the piece about like mentioning vendors or references vendors, we also struck out the part about endorsement and that wasn't the
intention. So it it so I actually think it would benefit by us going in and being clear that groups that are asking to be advertised may not endorse candidates. There's no nothing against us putting that out there. I think we accidentally deleted that part. I think it's part of the issue. We also don't want to send things out that are just
purely advertising for like for for private interests, right? So, and so one example is referencing a vendor. We are contract with Alphabest. Alphabest provides before and after care services for our kids. We have to reference them in our communications and they are a
vendor. So, that's not enforceable if we make that rule. Another example though is like for example we have the YMCA in town who runs several services for the community that is of general interest for families. It is sort of an advertisement when they ask us to put out some information about their
services but they are a large local organization that provides a lot of services. It seems to fit. So that's where we when we want to have that flexibility that makes sense. What I wouldn't be comfortable with are when we have like just all the different people who run camps all over the place and all
the people who have all their private services and like all right well we want to push that out there. Well, it's of general interest. I we want to be able to push back on that. And I think maybe we can massage some language about um about uh about clarifying things that are just
purely um purely political or or or or purely purely of of um I don't know how to say it, but basically just like raw advertisements that that aren't necessarily directly affiliated with school family interests.
Yeah, that's not that's not Yeah, we're not just selling ads. I think we all agree, right? I I agree on the on what we need to do. It's just got to massage a little bit. Yeah. So, but I think all the I think I think we've got plenty to work with here. Okay. To clean clean
things up. We good. Great. Yes. Give me a thumbs up. All right. We're good. All right. Acceptance of minutes March 24th. Acceptance of minutes March 24th uh April 7th uh regular public meeting and
April 7th executive session. Um I move minutes. Does someone second? Second. All in favor? I. Um other business hearing none. Great. Uh, comments from the
public may have outstayed our public. I don't know. Peter, you're on the I'm with the board. I made it. Peter Malton, uh, Ridgewood res better than us. Oh, man. It's It's going to be a tough workout in the
morning. So, first off, Sheila, congratulations on the um recognition tonight. Welld deserved. Um so um very uh assuming the calendar gets approved. Thank you for the lack of
rigidity in regards to the calendar and um thoughtfulness in regards to uh uh mental health uh tra people that travel and uh trying to have uh an an additional extended period of time. also
thinking logically about how close that might be to an early um uh spring break and also doing something a little different than we've done uh having that the week after uh Easter. It looks like
um in regards I just want to say in in regards to um some of the rates that uh are paid uh just a is a general general item you know to Miss Murphy and just a um you making sure that we're just keeping up on the environment not just
necessarily uh what's getting paid for teachers. You know, this was an issue from a number of years ago where, you know, we mentioned you can you can work at a grocery store locally and get paid benefits and get days off and get paid more than you your substantially more in some cases than we were getting paid
here. And so just making sure that, you know, general environment and inflation and so forth are being reviewed periodically um just so we don't get into that position again. I mean, it's been it's night and day, you know, from where we were three years ago in regards to staffing. So kudos to everybody
involved. Just want to make sure we never get back into that position. Um the um last item is in regards to intramural sports. You know, love to hear the conversation and and the goal in regards to that. Uh you everybody knows I've I've been a proponent of
this. Um, a few thoughts are, um, if there were the ability to do things on, uh, weekends like a traditional, um, uh, sport, um, either fields or in some cases, uh, within gyms, uh, cuz within
gyms also are not, um, sometimes will be there might be availability for indoor space um, versus some of the fields. um have thinking about it more in a multiport, you know, where we can do mult multiple sports on on the same day,
same location. Um and breaking up areas um using more informal fields, you know, um just thinking about side fields like I think about behind ridge, you areas that might not necessarily be formal fields to be able to play kickball or
something that or you can play various sports. It doesn't have to be as formal because it's intramurals and so as long as it's safe, maybe there are untraditional spaces um that could be considered. I'm not sure if uh uh uh uh
volunteers are considered versus paid positions uh in in regards to this and how that would work. Um might assist with some of the staffing um concerns and costs. Um considering grades uh some of the
younger grades maybe 3 to five uh cuz even during uh the those grades you there are kids that are just not competitive and parents don't want to maybe travel or whatever it may be that that I recognized during co that there
was there is a cohort of younger kids um that are missing that ability for team building and um and and also So, uh, being able to, um, uh, sorry, be confident was was the word I was looking
for. Uh, considering maybe board games as an option also again something out of the box. I know it's out of the box was being considered. Um, you but also things that a weekend, you know, inside things, whether it's board games or something in a gym, um, also could be a
consideration. So, just throwing out some thoughts as as that's being that's being discussed. So, and again, I continue to throw my hat in the box if I can be of any help. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, seeing no more hands and we've lost our audience
here, I think I can close the public comments and um I make a motion to go into executive session for the purpose of uh personnel pool personnel. Yeah.
Um and um our our next board meeting is the 2nd of June. Harrison, this is your last meeting. Thank you so much. Yes, you've been a great asset to the board. So, thank you. Okay. Uh so I move to join the me
join the meeting to executive session. No action will be taken and we won't be back after executive session into a public like someone like to second that. All in favor? So I'm thinking um
everybody we blew past everybody's prediction. So, I thought that I would do give the prize to the most optimistic person thinking that we would be out at
8:45. Muhammad