##VIDEO ID:QnBD7dpNMRk## e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e two one two three M check testing one two testing two testing2 one two testing one two tting testing for audio okay good evening everyone like to call this meeting to order and have a roll call here miss qua here M here Mr mmud here M Brogan here have a COR please join me in a flag salute and Pledge of Allegiance pursuant to the requirements of the open public meetings act advanced notice has been given to the Star Ledger the record and the cleric of the village of Ridgewood in addition notices were posted in the office of the board secretary and in all school buildings I'll just open with some information and it's good news um we want to congratulate our National Merit Scholarship um winners and this year about 1.3 million students took the 2023 preliminary SAT National Scholarship qualifying test last October and entered the National Merit program a nationwide competition for recognition and awards only some 16,000 who qualified to semifinalists have an opportunity to continue in the competition for Merit Scholarships to be offered next spring Ridgewood High School has eight semifinalists we also have 24 commended students um one of which is Harrison Burns so congratulations all the students names are listed on the agenda and we congratulate them uh Dr Schwarz uh presentations yes thank you we have two but we'll do one before comments from the public we'll give uh Mr Burns here an opportunity to give his uh representative report hello okay there we go um hi good to see you all um it's been uh some busy times at the high school especially for uh seniors with uh college applications you know early the Early deadline was uh on Friday um so it's been a little crazy there but uh we got some fun stuff going on um so the ridge of homecoming festivities have come to an end uh with the dance last Tuesday uh the 29th uh the entire week held themes for students to dress with each day uh so Monday was pajama day Tuesday was Jersey day Wednesday was pink out day Thursday was twin day and then it ended Friday with the blackout uh which is also the day of the homecoming game um on that same Friday seniors got a chance to decorate their cars uh and park in front of the school and kind of show them off uh and students got a chance to kind of you know walk around and look at some of those uh decorated cars which were pretty cool uh and that was also the day of the school pep rally so uh the some of the periods were shortened during the day and that last hour of the school day was dedicated to a a rally uh so all the students met in the in the gym and were assigned a section of the bleachers by grade and then all the fall sports teams got to kind of run out through a tunnel uh of the cheerleaders and there was there uh some games afterwards that happened it was just a really kind of cool fun way to bring the entire student body together which usually doesn't happen um and Dr Schwarz Schwarz excuse me joined us for that actually I saw him there um so maybe he can speak to a little bit what he thought of it but I thought it was pretty cool um and then the dance was the following Tuesday at the high school where there's music uh and there was some um card tables set up and and some uh some snacks and drinks given out uh so that was fun uh the rid High School forensic students recently had their crime scene project uh in which they use props and dummies to set up and photograph a mock crime scene um that's a pretty popular class at the high school it's pretty cool they they really go all in on that um Dr Ila arson the director for the center for nanoc scale materials and the nanoscience and Technology division at argon National Laboratory Chicago visited chemistry honors classes via Zoom a few weeks ago to discuss her expertise and experience in the field of nanoscience um as part of the freshman's continued orientation to the High School freshman Focus brought them up to the learning Commons in order to familiarize them with the layout collection and services of that space uh and the Latin academic team had their first national competition a couple weeks ago and are awaiting their results uh as the rest of the nation participates so good luck to those students and uh the Ridgewood Cambodia project held an event in collaboration with steel wheel Tavern to raise money for our sister schools in Cambodia um so a portion of all the sales the steel wheel made that night uh went directly to them which was pretty cool um and something that did not make my original report but I wanted to share um we students walked into the high school today and a section of the main hallway had been um repainted uh as part of a so uh I don't know if you remember but um I had mentioned uh at our first meeting actually that on that first week of school as part of the festivities um an impact artist had come in and asked students uh to write and draw on a note card one word that they felt best represented like the best aspect of Ridgewood and so uh he completely he painted the walls and the ceiling these all bright vibrant colors these very cool patterns and then all around that are posted uh some of the students responses uh of all these different words so you know community and inclusion and family and and opportunity and all these really cool things um it's it's very vibrant it's it was kind of a shock to see I didn't I didn't know it was going to be up till I had seen it um it was kind of a surprise to everybody but it's really kind of a cool little little spot of the hallway now so um and then moving on to sports and activities um the RS marching band has been on a roll as of late which culminated in a win of the state champion title at their most recent us bands group competition uh the band earned a score of 93 out of 100 and won best music best visual best effect and best color guard so shout out to them they had an outstanding show um the green Club has continued its hard work in the pursuit of sustainability at the high school with a barrage of events in the past few weeks including cleanups in Village Parks maintaining the school garden raising rainbow trout and conducting biodiversity surveys on campus uh Ridgewood had their last regular season home game on Friday the 25th uh the senior turnout was huge to cheer on the Maroons on their last home field uh for the last time for the regular season uh and then they had their first playoff game uh last Friday and they had a nice win there so they move on uh which is exciting uh ridard crew had a successful outing at the Uber challenging and competitive head of the Charles Vata in Boston a couple weeks ago uh their placing qualifies them for next year's Agata so they did a nice job there uh the rhs bands had their annual pointsetta Blitz day a couple of weekends ago where students went door to-door in an attempt to make sales to the citizens of Ridgewood to help support the band um the RS new players had their opening show of the year with the Wolves uh the show featured a nine Girl cast who each took part of the a player on a soccer team uh it was meant to address the hardships and shared experience of life for young women uh my sister was in it so I went and saw it it was it was a really good show it was it was very interesting very kind of different um definitely not like a you know Shakespeare play that you would see it was kind of relevant and new and interesting uh the RS High Times is in the process of releasing its fall issue for students to enjoy digitally uh it features interesting exciting and relevant articles written edited and published by students and finally boys and girls soccer girls volleyball boys football and gynastics all continue their Seasons as they wrap up the regular season and begin eyeing the playoffs so uh exciting times as we move to the end of fall Sports and into the beginning of winter so that's all I have for you thank you thank you Harrison and additionally just what I would throw out there just very recent news uh the rhs marching band won the won national yesterday so first place in their division nationally at in it was in Allentown was their competition so I want to give them a quick shout out because that was just yesterday great news so in addition to winning the uh the state level competition um and yes it was great I had a really awesome time coming to the uh the um pep rally I was really impressed with um with the student body particularly there was a lot of people in One Gym space and a lot of energy and it was really directed very positively really grateful to be part of it so kudos to all the students thank you so much I will open now for uh public comment um uh you when you come to the microphone please state your name and your municipality and um please limit your comments to four minutes there's a timer up there if that helps you um and we welcome you thank you um hello everyone my name is Diva maal and I'm from Village of Richford I reside at 457 ban street I'm a senior at Richwood High School and a head leader for South Asian Student Association first I want to congratulate our football team on their Victory last Friday night though it's disheartening that such a celebration happened on a day we observe as devali District y Dali is a significant celebration for many a time for families to gather pray and honor meaningful Traditions it's heartbreaking that this sacred day was overshadowed by a football game mov from Saturday to Friday the rhs TV Club informed me that they were unable to live stream the game due to this Sudden Change disrupting our observance of the Val and showing lack of consideration for significance nothing should ever take precedence over our religious observance many students especially those who are mixed race May feel marginalized by these scheduling decisions the there are individuals in our community who celebrate diali um even if it's not immediately apparent It's upsetting to see our experience experiences overlooked this situation is unfair to everyone no student should feel sidelined the Indian Community along with with the broader rwood Community deserves better recognition of their cultural practices it's vital for those who do not celebrate Diwali to understand its importance without that understanding respect for our Traditions May diminish speaking from my own experiences I know firsthand the challenges of feeling undervalued if games aren't scheduled on other holidays like Christmas then why are we scheduling on the valley if rescheduling the game was truly not possible how can we justify prioritizing a football game over a signifant religious observant I love and respect football but no sport should overshadow the importance of a holiday that holds deep meaning for many in our community if our district has approved and designated Dali as a holiday districtwide it deserves the same respect as any religious observance students should not have to choose between participating something they love and honoring in their beliefs thank you for your time thank you hello my name is Sai agal and I am a senior at Rood High School I reside at 676 Howard Road so I am also here to talk about what happened on Friday November 1st as a varsity Athlete on the rwood girls tennis team I can't imagine choosing between going to such an important match or celebrating Dali at home which I shouldn't have to choose between those in the first place and an Indian holiday should not be disregarded no matter what the situation is and it is completely unfair to choose between going to watch the football games which is incredibly important to me as a senior and celebrating one of the most important cultural events of my life so while I understand that due to circumstances there was nothing that could have been done I still think that students should shouldn't have to choose between one or the other and as an athlete and a person who thoroughly enjoys going to the football games this sense of community should be improved on and having a day off for Dali was incredibly hard enough and now that we do it isn't fair that we have to choose and this practice should be prevented in the future thank you for your time thank you just going forward um when you do come to the microphone to speak you don't have to give your address just uh I mean thank you for doing that but you don't have to so just your name and your municipality hello my name is gr callana Ren and you can just yeah um I'm part of the village of Ridgewood thank you for having me here and I'd like to start off by saying that by learning from an institution which respects diversity I would expect that same respect to be shown in other parts as well so fostering a space where an Indian holiday is disregarded does not set a good example for anyone especially not for students I'm beyond grateful to be studying at rhs but find it quite ironic how the TR tradition of Excellence doesn't support other traditions and while I understand some minute exceptions and complications I still think that holidays in general whether it be one that resonates with me or one that resonates with my classmate should not have students choosing between one or the other most students including myself enjoy coming to these games but having to give up any values and my culture to go to a football game is simply ridiculous this game goes beyond just football games and more to the mindset we instill in others this is my last year and I don't want a reputation or practice similar to this thank you for listening thank you hello my name is AD toari and I'm a sophomore at rhs I'm here to talk about what happened on Friday November 1st there was a football game placed on a religious holiday Diwali I believe the superintendent and the board of education did this on purpose and thought the community would not say anything this disappoint me this disappoints me Beyond imagination and puts me in disbelief that this could even happen my question to the board is how come we have no school on Friday because of a religious holiday designated by Board of Education we have a football game on the same day I hope to never see this again happen in my community again for any culture thank you for your time good evening good even I'm Rishi tuari a freshman at Ruckers University and a member of the village of V and today I wanted to bring your attention to the game on Friday along with my colleagues um as an avid member of the marching band and continuing marching band at Ruckers and Beyond I was very disappointed to see that a game was held for my younger colleagues where a religious holiday would be placed um as a member of the Indian Community I was very disappointed to see that students had to decide between going to a game to increase morale and of course make the team perform better or celebrate a religious holiday with their family in fact a field captain of the marching band vashni udeshi is from India and she is also voice concerned about having a game on a religious holiday and you know just echoing what my peers have said if there hasn't been any games more more or less on any other holidays why has there been a game on the Val such a sacred holiday for the Indian people I just think that um we should be able to celebrate our holiday and if the game can't be rescheduled we should have it we should just not take a part in the game as a whole and I just think that if games aren't happening on other holidays lastly they should not be happening on ours thank you hello everyone my name is AD Singh rwood so I'm here representing the rwood Indian Community which I co-founded and I'm a board member of so I want to make a statement on behalf of rwood Indian Community but first I want to thank IA Sachi Karan ADI and Rishi for speaking up so rwood Indian Community includes 800 members from various religions in India such as Hinduism Sikhism jism Islam and Christianity first I want to express our gratitude to the rwood village and the rwood public school system for designating Diwali as a day of designating Diwali as a day of this holiday allows many of our members particularly those from the Hindu sake Jan background to celebrate with their families however we recently faced a scheduling conflict on Diwali as a football match was set for the same day many of our members including football supporters band members and those in the school AV team were put in a difficult position choosing between attending the game or spending time with their families dozens of our members reached out and we received hundreds of messages of support requesting the administration to avoid such conflicts in future while we understand from superintendent's letter that eliminating all all conflicts may not be feasible we were unable to find examples of school activities scheduled on such significant religious holidays we are thankful for the efforts of rhs Staff particularly principal Nas and athletic director cook who proactively communicated about this conflict and tried their best to mitigate it we hope that the superintendent and the administration will heed to the professional recommendation made by principal and athletic character and give it more consideration next time to avoid such conflicts especially when the conflicting activity do not align with the traditional celebration for our religious day off rather than watching the football game under the lights we prefer Illuminating the home and being with a families and support the game next day thank you for your attention and thank you for all what you do thank you good evening and it's appropriate for me to say namaste as well my name is MAA and I'm a resident of Mawa I stand here before you as a social studies teacher in the district at rwood high school and a grateful product of this school system travel BF in rwood high school I'm also a parent of a student in this District I have proudly competed for and participated in the extracurricular life of rhs as a student and have also had the privilege of serving as a head varsity coach and adviser in that same world as an adult as a teacher of social studies I ask my students to care about their community and our Civic health and I think we're doing quite well from what you see and that is why I am here tonight to practice what I encourage my students to do speaking to our community for our Collective Health you have heard from students and alumni parents about the recent decision to play the first round of the football playoffs playoffs on this past Friday night November 1st which was the day the District closed to observe the valy and I would like to speak to the to the decision based on the facts last Saturday when I came to know of the decision to play on Friday I was perplexed as a head former head coach I looked at the njsiaa that's the State website and saw that November 2nd Saturday was another option for the game at once understanding the paperwork for date selection was the following day I emailed many of the respected folks here before me to express my concern with the conflict with the valley particularly as we just came off of that was so eloquently stated by you Harrison um spirit week which is a week of inclusion the disc decision to play on Friday night felt like it was bound to exclude without needing to do so nor the intention to do so so I started to ask questions just as I would ask my students to dig deeper I discovered that as early as October 10th our athletic director Keith cook had notified the state that we were holding Saturday November 2nd not Friday November 1 for our projected football game based on the solidity of our record and in large part due to the district's practice of observing the valley I discovered that as a result the marching band director planned to play on Saturday and similar Arrangements were put in place for concession stand volunteers and student government as well as the AV I discovered that the date did not seem acceptable to a particular segment of this community as it would not allow for a Friday Night Lights game so they sought to move the date to Friday over the recommendation of the athletic director the principal and the original intention of the policy to observe holidays I advocated for our Collective Community our marching band our marching band director our Student Government our av staff our team not just minorities I am here to speak as a Ridgewood Public School educator not as a person of indian-american descent though I am proud to be only after there was still no progress in support of inclusion members of The Ridgewood Community exercised their civic voice only then were proactive measures made to rectify the situation but then it was too late to re-engage support staff for Saturday the decision to play on Friday night was made in support of a few sadly and it broke my heart I couldn't be there my son couldn't be there many of us couldn't be there the game was very sparsely attended for a number of reasons without concessions without a full band without the band director and our team our football team a wonderful organization that is trying under the leadership of Coach Watson to bring people together did not get the crowd it deserves given our value we must do better we must privilege the expertise and experience of our building leaders to make the best decisions for their programs the students and the community I appreciate the time that athletic director cook and principal n have spent talking to so many of us we must be more aware of our blind spots and privileges to be cognizant of their impact sometimes very very painful one of my personal American Heroes the late John Lewis spoke of good trouble doing what's right even when it's not comfortable or convenient that's why I'm here a mistake only with correction shows true learning we need to model this for our students and accept culpability when it is the right thing to do this should be all of our fight if we are to truly claim a tradition of Excellence thank you for your time and thank you for your willingness to continue this conversation further thank you are there any more comments from anyone here and then we'll go to if there are comments on the hello hello I'm calling milen first time long time I'm from the east side of Ridgewood um I'm an inspiring educator as well I actually started my career here 20 years ago I was Dr Shen LS first hire when the summer that she was employed as a principal at Ridge School um um Dr Murphy was my professor long time ago um and I recall them and the students that I've taught along the way because their stories are important to me and um I would just like to remind them um to continue sharing their stories and um you know thanking them for stepping up um that is just one piece of the of the the fabric of the community uh there are more stories to share um and I would just like to thank the Community member last month's board ofed meeting who made the comment that uh he noticed the agenda was missing from from the links and I noticed that too and I thought um coincidence chalk it up to a new new website um I didn't think too much about it but you know these points of checks and balances uh coming from the public they're essential for a functioning school system so thank you to that gentlemen thank you to these uh students who who are able to speak out um you know it could just be my own sense of humor but I also noticed that the district's organizational structure followed the ssds uh presentation I don't know an example of transparency in development I suppose um lastly you know I just want to again thank those students whom I've worked with and whom I recall those whose lunches I still remember them eating and the reasons why they didn't want to play Recess even though I was always willing to play wall ball with them uh I could I know where they sat I know what they had struggles with I know was always involved in their celebrations and I recall them their names um although I don't get in touch with them I still do recall them um you know so that's my story I look forward to reconnecting with the district um and I encourage every single student out there too to continue sharing their story and if you need help your parents your teachers and your community will help you um so since I know that you do like stories I have one here I'll leave it for someone to collect as a donation to the district's professional library of learning so I hope someone can make use of it thank you for your time thank you any other com any other comments from the public here in the room do the microphone um Susan um um Susan Ruan um I live I'm a resident of Ridgewood um calling um in regards to a few items but um I I just heard about Dali and I do believe that um all religious holidays should be observed even though it might not be my religion um it is important to to have that acceptance to all religious holidays um so I do support the People speaking for that um the other topic I would like to talk about was this weekend there was an accident on West SLE River Road and trun um all the kids on this side of Ridgewood which is the other side of Route 17 are have are bus to halls or bef or on the high school West out River Road and trune is unique because it is a bus stop and this weekend there was an accident there um and one of the cars weed into a into a house um I know I had spoken at the citizen advisory committee asking for a speed bump because West the road is unique because it's the only Road in Ridgewood that exits from the highway and there's no stop signs there's no lights there's nothing and people just continue going at a fast speed down the road again there's a bus stop there for kids we're asking that the school district also get involved with trying to get some sort of um preemptive measures before someone actually gets hurt on that strip um and thankfully the accident not I mean happened on a Saturday or on the weekend versus during the school day um and then the other is for the special needs I just wanted to follow up and to see what was happening with um the audit or um the self audit um and what was happening with that um I apologize I haven't listened to the last meeting so I'm not certain but um and that was pretty much it thank you thank you not seeing any more um public comment at this time we'll close public comment and I thank you for coming um Dr schores would you like to uh respond yes I very much would like to thank you so much so first of all I just want to thank everyone who came out to be with us here tonight um we had a variety of students come and speak and former students and even our faculty members and I just want to say I think on behalf of the board that we all really appreciate your civic responsibility your willingness to come and speak and share your thoughts with us um I want to I'm gonna I'm going to provide a little bit of commentary um regarding some of your concerns uh but I want to start by just saying that I think I do speak for the board uh when I express uh the extent to which um I've heard from them the their their enthusiasm for their support of our of our community of of all of our community members and particularly our Indian community members um it's very clear to me working with them as your elected trustees that they very much value your culture your heritage and uh and and you individually in the community I also want to clarify with respect to the conversations around this specific situation with this football game schedule on deali that this was not this is not a board function so our Board of Education members weren't even consulted in this matter so I know at least one of our speakers mentioned something about the board of education's decision and I just want to clarify that it's not something that was uh that was up for the Board of Education um the board is in charge of governing the schools and making sure that the schools are well run but they're not responsible for making those decisions they applo a superintendent that's me I then supervise the administration and the and all the faculty of the district and when it comes down to making difficult decisions like how to how to balance competing priorities and limited schedules and only so much time uh I provide guidance regarding how those decisions might best be made I try to refrain from telling people what to do I try to stick to helping people provide understand like I said what those what those those guidelines are for making those decisions that said given the level of concern from the from our members of our community who've reached out not just from our Indian Community but from from uh other other ethnic backgrounds and racial backgrounds within the community who reached out on behalf of our Indian community members um that we know that this is something that's really of great import and so I spoke with several of our board members regarding this specific topic and I know that they were very dismayed to know that there was any kind of strife uh among our community members and particularly that that that that we would have a circumstance where there' be any kind of perception that uh people would have to choose between being an active participant in their school experience and observing their religion so a couple of things that I just want to provide some clarification on and I'm saying this I'm going to share a little bit because I just think that uh your time and energy and effort to come here and speak your minds uh warrants uh a response and a respect one at that so for starters um I know that there's been a lot of conversation and effort historically in the district to do more to honor the diverse community members that we have we have a really wonderful and diverse district and uh and it's important a big component of of honoring folks who who uh hail from different backgrounds and maybe have different um observances and cultural Traditions that we do our best to accommodate them when we make when we engage in scheduling that said as I referenced in my letter uh one of the challenges that we have as an institution and schools in general have as an institution for being able to honor all those Traditions especially when they're religious Traditions is that uh school districts are required by law to be secular institutions so the the basis by which that we engage in scheduling around people's religious holidays in various groups is not predicated on observing that religion as a district so we can't as a district we can't honor specific religious observances and I know that feels a little tricky because there's some blurring of the lines when we do honor cultural Traditions so for example and I have not had a chance to respond everyone but I did get an email from a Community member asking well then why do we have some cultural celebrations in schools so for example some of our schools actually had Dali C develop devali events themed events at their schools and the reason is that because religion is a component of culture right and culture is something that is a secular concept and we want to make sure that we're honoring people's cultural Traditions when we schedule our school year the secular basis that we use when we decide that we are not going to hold school on a religious holiday for a group is based on the idea that there will be students from that group who will not be in attendance at that day so it's not that the school district is observing that holiday and I know it seems obtuse that we it's hard to imagine the idea of like say in a in an American society that we would ever hold school on Christmas but the secular reason why we don't hold school on Christmas is not because we're a majority Christian country it's because nobody would show up if we tried to hold school on Christmas we'd have staffing issues and we'd have student issues for sure we'd have we'd have we'd have massive absences among students so when we have conversations around how we schedule we want to certainly be respectful and mindful of what students and families will be expecting to do as part of their cultural Traditions so when it comes to scheduling school which is a compulsory event we are going to be the most the most judicious to try to give give students time if it's an evening event a religious evening event we'll try to refrain from having assignments scheduled and if it's a daytime event that we know is of significance then we make make may make a decision to not schedule school that day so uh I think it's great that our schools are not that we don't hold schools on to wall because it is a day of really significant import and to expect kids to have to choose between school or being home with their families especially we have so many so many such students that doesn't make sense so I think having our schools closed on Diwali makes a lot of sense there are other holidays that may make sense to some maybe from other religions that they would want to not hold school for but that's where we have to just kind of be thoughtful as we build our calendar out because we also have a certain amount limited amount of time in which we can have school days with respect to extracurricular events this is defin definitively where it gets more challenging so the school district and the school and this High School specifically is very intentional I've heard a lot of positive comments about Mr nias and Mr cook and I would would join you in those I know that they feel very strongly about trying doing their best to schedule events thoughtfully and in a forward-thinking way so that way students aren't inconvenienced by these types of choices that said there are folks who who may have differing opinions regarding uh regarding their preferred time to have certain events and while we want to make sure that we're mindful of not creating conflicts for students the fact that certain certain individuals certain people who who are not a part of that group uh may may have a preferred may have a preferred schedule that might conflict with with um people's religious observance if they're not observant within that religion um that's also something that I don't think that we should demonize um but that said to the extent that we can be proactive and thoughtful about moving those times we should now what what occurred um there was a to be clear um it was brought to my attention that there was there were community members who really were interested in having the game on Friday night um particularly with respect to the fact that their belief was my interpretation of their belief was that that the the football not so much looking at the football program as a CommunityWide event but rather looking at as an event for students participating in that activity so my position has been and continues to be that the school district does not prohibit activities from occurring on specific for on specific religious events however the schools themselves have the ability and the right and the empowerment to make judgment calls around when their programs can and should take place and have activities um there was a decision to move forward with trying to move the game to Friday night and I understand that's what really got people concerned and worked up that was within the school in the program um I simply did not I simply did not say that we could not consider that night on the basis of the fact that it's a we're a secular institution and not necessarily everyone is observing that day so that's a kind of a legal technicality but we also didn't have any specific protocols or policies on the books regarding exactly how to make those kind of different decisions once it was clear that there was so many community members who really wanted to attend the game and felt dismayed at not being able to attend that Rose to the level of of the legal standard of having a secular purpose meaning that there were individuals in the Community who maybe weren't a part of the athletic team this team particularly but were a part of the marching band were part of the AV process wanted to be active participants in supporting their their their friends and wanted to be at the game themselves that's a legitimate secular purpose when I met with uh the uh when I met with Mr nias um we met early in the week and uh and I had a conversation I said listen I just want to make sure that w're clear that that there is no there is no order here to play on Friday night and we have a clear secular purpose for scheduling on Saturday so I recommended that they meet with with uh with the team leadership and with Mr cook and that they have a conversation about whether or not they can move the game to Saturday which they did there was Universal decision on our side that they wanted to move the game to Saturday including the program leadership and so we made every effort that we possibly could over a couple days to do so uh Mrs Murphy was who's the assistant superintendent for secondary education worked closely with them we almost almost were able to make it happen um I did not include this the detail in my letter but the logistical challenge was actually on the side of of the opposing team which we have to schedule with uh we had cleared all of our hurdles on our side but unfortunately we could not um help them with their Staffing situation for Saturday I had hoped midweek that we'd be able to be to turn around and say we were able to move it to Saturday perhaps if the if the decision to if the recom initial thought to move keep it on Saturday had stayed in place and there wasn't a decision to move it back to Friday Perhaps Perhaps that might have been enough time we'll never know but the reality is that coming away from this circumstance this definitely this experience has made it very clear that when we have any group of community members who are going to be observing any type of religious observance that it is in the district's best interest and we should make clear for all of our programs that not just for the players within the programs but also for the spectators and for other uh auxiliary people who are supporting roles whether they be in uh whether they be team captains whether they be in a marching band whether they be in an audio visual component or whether they just be students who want to support that team that a legitimate secular response would be to say that if we know that any group of students will be uh participating in any kind of religious observance that we would make our best faith effort to avoid schuling at that time we had had something like that on the books that would have been a much clearer process for us to move forward so I brought this topic to our policy committee and we had an I think we had an initial conversation about this already right um and right now we're looking at vetting that language to ensure that this is uh that that is acceptable and just a little backstory so you can just know where I'm coming from with this conversation uh in my prior District we dealt with a with a a legal challenge which didn't actually rise rise to the level of an act of of a of a formal claim um but we did have a legal challenge to a written policy that actually prohibited um uh activities to occur on when the district is closed for religious holidays um at in that District at that time the attorney's opinion was that that was that that that was a constitutionally questionable so having had that kind of experience my background it's important to me to make sure that I guide this board and this District in the direction that we are on solid legal footing but that said I want this I want our Indian Community and everyone who's here and advocated for our Indian Community to hear clearly that you're heard and you're seen we appreciate you and we appreciate your sentiments we appreciate your professionalism with you've come and you've stated your case um and on behalf of the Board of Education um I know that I know that I I can actually I don't want to speak for them so I'll speak for me right now I just want you to know that you're seen and that we are going to be moving forward with that type of recommendation and that should significantly help the fact that duali is already closed for school or rather is a day that we do not hold School further gives indication as to why um as to the need for um avoiding that avoiding scheduling things on that evening as well so there are a couple of other topics too that I'd like to touch on but I can I gather some of the board members would like to speak yeah Dr JS um I wanted to just add uh some color to that thank you for all the students and um staff and reju committee members who came here and spoke and thanks Dr Schwarz for a very detailed answer I just wanted to add one um data point to that and uh Mr Matthews I would like my this comment to be added to the minutes just for the future reference um so Dr Schwarz I did receive a call a few days before the uh game from a Community member and a good friend asking me if Diwali is a cultural holiday or a religious holiday and at that time I did not know these details and I could not understand this level of nuances about that and my response um and that's what I wanted to document in the minutes for futures because we all know what happened and we all recognize what needs to be done and I consider me as part of the One initial um um story that developed because I the way I responded but my response was and that's what I want to document that response is Diwali is both a cultural and religious holiday so it's not just religious holiday when the when it comes to the secular Point U Diwali is both a cultural and religious holiday it is primarily celebrated by Hindus as a festival of light symbolizing the victory of light over darkness and good over evil evil however it is also observed by Jans six and some Buddhists each with their own historical and spiritual significance Beyond its religious Roots Diwali has become a cultural celebration in many communities marked by festive activities decorations and family gatherings so that's the last line I just wanted to emphasize and as U uh Mr Singh mentioned um in growing up in India every religion F celebrated Diwali and even here um we had a celebration on Saturday at re high school and um at that celebration we had uh community members from Islam from Christianity um so which is not religious part for them but they were part of the Diwali celebrations their kids performed on the stage so it is a it is a cultural holiday for us um not just religious holiday so if if Matters from the definition perspective and I just wanted to mention that I want to document that because I did not realize that that difference between whether it's religious that it has to be a secular purpose and since multiple religions are celebrating it and since it is a cultural so hopefully in future we will consider that as a secular purpose thank you and thanks for those those details and I I did not recognize those before thank you I want to jump in here as well and just thank you all for for coming here I mean especially after the fact right that takes a lot of U courage fastness right A lot of times before the fact right you're kind of hoping for a change uh and that gives you the hope but the fact that you came after the fact to kind of send the message for the future is is the most important and uh you know for me personally it's been something for me and my family as well we've had similar experiences for many many years as well so I 100% see where you're coming from and feel it um and the most important thing I want to say is thank you for coming to speak up um as you've heard you know it does make a difference you know sometimes uh people don't think of things or realize things or they're thinking about things in a different way and uh and you'll see in the history of this country right the the the way policy changes is by people speaking up and sharing how they're feeling and what's important to them and that brings about change sometimes it's slow but it comes uh so thank you all for coming also wanted to thank you all for coming um we the board members we did all receive emails um bringing this matter to our attention um and it's it's important to speak up um before during and after and I do appreciate the way each of you took the time to come here and do that um I also just wanted to add um we did have we did start the discussion at the policy committee meeting which was early last week when this issue first came up and while the board you know while the board doesn't it's not something that the board does in terms of um scheduling games and things like that it is our responsibility and our job to make sure that the policies that we put in place reflect our community reflect our goals and um do the right thing quite frankly and um you know I very much appreciate Mark the um the way we need to be very careful because uh I firmly believe in the separation of church and state and obviously that's something that we need to be very careful about but it is clear that um religion is a part of culture and that this was something that was cultural but I think the other Nuance that we we have to mention here is the fact that for the past two years this district has had as part of its goals inclusion and so if we're going to say that we want to increase inclusion we want to make sure that everyone understands that that is a value of ours we need to make sure that our policies and then our practices reflect that and and inevitably there's going to be at times a scheduling conflict or some other conflict between something that is of cultural significance to members of our community and something that is also of significance to members of our community and a judgment call is going to have to be made and I want to make sure that when we're in policy we're really really taking that apart and fleshing it out so that um we're making sure that we've learned from this experience and that we're uh making the correct judgment calls moving forward so thank you all again for your time especially of all of you the students but the gentleman who came up from Ruckers and took I'm assuming took time out of school this is a busy time of year and so I appreciate the fact that you took your time to come here and support your community and lend your voice I too um thank you for coming um so this whole situation um has been a concern to me so I would ask that there be a careful debriefing among the administrative staff about um how the decision was made if we had again just looking back could we have done anything differently um if there was the opportunity weeks ahead of time to have scheduled this on Saturday not quite sure what fell apart so um to debrief it to learn from it to I look forward to uh the policy and wording of the policy and um I look forward to making um really conscious decisions um that are meaningful to our community when situations like this arise we have a number of uh days where we're closed for um observance uh um we have Rashana yankapur we have Eid we have a good Friday Christmas duali so they are a number of days and all have a cultural component so I think it's important to really look and debrief understand what happened and um and hopefully not have a reoccurrence of this again so I was on the um policy committee with uh Mary when we were um when this explanation of secular versus religious uh components of any days off um was explained and I really appreciate Dr sh going in detail about the differences and the nuances of cultural versus religion and I hope it was helpful for you as it was for me um so we'll be discussing it further in policy but I do want to thank everyone who emailed us to the board who came in person who spoke we all spoke so eloquently and um it was really meaningful to hear directly from you thank you Dr schores did you have other um comments you wanted to respond to just a couple points of acknowledgement um oh and just to be clear I know we have a lot of students who are here tonight you are welcome to stay for this whole meeting we're going to go over through a lot of interesting data and all that but we also will not be offended if you decide that you want to go home after you've spoken okay that's what lots of people do okay um do we have any students who are here specifically for the recognition of National Merit Scholarship [Laughter] well thank you unless your teacher told you you had to stay for the ho thanks for coming everyone have a great night okay great job tonight they're welcome they're welcome to try the AP wasn't for the the uh the njsla presentation and and for our for our for our AP students who are might be hanging out you can feel free if it's if you're having trouble hearing or seeing you can feel free to come in into the seats over here you can also feel free to stay out there it's up to you guys you might feel uh more included if you oh no guess not okay now how to clear a room Dr Shores oh man I think I played a few gigs like this back in the day um so just a couple of acknowledgements um I'm not sure if Mr mulen is still here but he brought he came up and he shared a shared a looks like he shared a book with us so I want toe want to say thank you to him for sharing that with us Mrs Ru Ruan is with us um or was with us at least virtually um and I'm going to recommend that one of our team members just reach out regarding the accidents that she was speaking about and her safety concerns so we can understand that a little bit better um and then uh she requested a followup regarding um the Special Education data review that we're doing and we should have some feedback on that in that sometimes between now and December we'll get that closed up and I think that was it thank you um so now we'll go to uh the presentation which is the 2024 testing results for the New Jersey student student learning assessments njsla and dynamic learning Maps DL M um and um we will start then great uh do we have the uh presentation uh little piece thank you so much um so Dr Murphy recommended that I start my presentation this year by going over in detail the presentation from last year but I'm not going to do that to everybody but thank you for that recommendation thank you I'm sure we're all disappointed however this this year's presentation was augmented with many more slides me Madam President we got to close the public portion oh I'm sorry oh thank you um I'll will close I thought I did close public comment before I asked uh Dr Schwarz to uh comment so I think I did but I said seeing no um more cup uh okay but I will close public comment then if I if you think I did not do that Moll call Donnie oh we never voted on that closing okay I'm sorry is that a necessary oh okay all right the big event the um Dr Schwarz is all right so so thank you all so much um first of all I have a few guests with me here that I'd like to invite up we have Dr Walsh who is our supervisor of humanities at the elementary level if you want to come on up Dr Walsh it be great to have you we have M Ashley and nembo as well who's our math supervisor at the secondary level and we have Tara Taylor who is our supervisor for Sciences at the secondary level so if you guys if you all want to come on up um I I may ask you to jump in from time to time um to help along uh so just to provide some context this is our annual presentation of the New Jersey student learning assessment results no signal I'll keep talking keep get the running so uh so we have a lot of slides here um but the reality is that this doesn't have to be a super long conversation um our our state of the schools address is where we really dig into the best analysis of our performance with respect to the New Jersey student learning assessment results um the reason we do it then is because we get a lot of data we get the full data set from the state uh it it does take them almost a full year to release that data but once we have that data we can compare ourselves compare performance to other districts that we care about we give a much better sense as to how we're doing generally but right now at this time of year the state requires Us by law to uh actually might be by code but but but certainly I'm not sure if it's statute or code but I guess it's by law um that within 60 days of receiving these results we have to report them publicly at a public Board of Education meeting so we're really satisfying a regulatory requirement with this but with being that we have this data now it's an appropriate time to have a conversation about how about how how the students did last year it's up all right it's up that's great I thought it I thought it was Dr Murphy [Laughter] maybe Dr Murphy's signaling that he wants to give the presentation so um so I'm going to move through these slides relatively quickly we decided uh you know I have a team uh of folks who help participate in this but I specifically have to give credit to honor fryberg she's our grants writer and she's just really strong in data analysis and she has to do a lot of these reports and um uh on the on the doe side for us and she's done a really wonderful job of assembling much most much really all of this data um we had a couple of rounds where I gave her some feedback for some tweaks and she was able to really do that very quickly so um for the if you see next time you see honor make sure you give her uh give her a little Kudos because she's done a great job um in the future I imagine what we'll probably do is put most of these slides in an appendix because they don't they a lot of them are really for quick review they they don't necessarily tell a whole story in the state of the schools address we tend to focus on slides that are really data rich and information Rich some of this in some of these slides uh aren't necessarily very rich but nevertheless they do tell something so we'll talk about that we'll get into really identifying some key trends um we did we did ask uh some of our supervisor team who was with us here today to help come up with just some basic uh further OBS observations and then some next steps from their lens and then I'm going to give some just takeaways as to what I think our next steps are uh so for some basic facts um our objectives are that we're going to provide an initial analysis of the District results from the spring 2024 New Jersey student learning assessments we'll use data visualizations that I think are user friendly people can people can uh benefit from but we're going to all work together to identify any possible Trends in student achievement we want to explain how some hypothetical Trends will will be further investigated so meaning that when we have some we have some hypotheses that might explain those Trend we're going to look into them a little more and then we'll provide some tentative action plans so for a little bit of background about the NJ about um language Arch around the njsla this is this fulfills a federal requirement so I know this is a state test but the elementary and Ed uh secondary Education Act which is a federal law which provides uh out funds for school districts throughout the states uh sets sets up a system whereby the federal government can uh Place requirements on public schools even though constitutionally the authority to govern public education is is uh is attributable to the states via the 10th Amendment so uh this is an interesting Dynamic that we have uh in in our state where the federal government and the Department of Education gets very involved in what schools do we have to complete the St at the state level the state has to complete a grant to make us eligible for these funds and at in their Grant application they have to commit to certain standards uh they have to commit to having state level standards that are assessed on a regular basis and that there's certain reporting requirements so that way they can be eligible for those federal funds so uh we're reporting out here today because these are administered annually they're administered in the spring in the around the April May time frame and uh unfortunately because this is a huge undertaking to engage in such rigorous testing of so many students there's a pretty significant lag between when the test is taken and when the data becomes available to us we have to remember that this data uh serves as a lagging indicator of student progress meaning that this isn't a reflection of how our students are in the grades that they're in so when you see grade three up here that's our current fourth graders who were in grade three last year right so we got a little bit of a delay um we also uh don't have full data sets as I said so we can't do our full comparisons uh to other school districts and for science we actually really don't get much in the way of discret data at all so there's very hard for us to draw inference um there's also a few things on here that we have to report on there's not much to report include those to satisfy the requirements so I'm going to go ahead and move fairly quickly here um because I know that we're all fans of brevity and if uh if there's anything I'm gonna air on the side of being brief I know that's hard to believe I am going to air on the side of trying to be brief if I'm being too brief please feel free to interject but for those who are but I know for sorry my mic's kind of going in and out I don't know if you have a solution for that gentlemen we don't need to slow this down at all okay gonna keep them going all right did the timer start yet Mr Murphy I know there's an [Laughter] uh what number did my wife take did she take the over or the under all right so this this first slide doesn't really say very much it's participation rate we have to report on this but suffice to say our participation rate is high it's been high it's because we we we require students to take the test um technically if a family decides that they don't want their child to take the test they can refuse the test and we're not going to chain them to a chair and make them take it um but the reality is that most students do take the test 95% usually the threshold for Effective adequate participation were consistently over that 95% uh this is just in bar graph so you can see it more visually obviously we're near 100% across the board so participation is not an issue for us for background if you're not familiar there's a f there's five levels to the test there the levels are did not meet expectation partially approached expectations and then the two proficient levels or passing levels if you would not that you have to repeat grade if you don't pass this test um is met expectations or exceeded expectations and I want to say that again clearly because I don't think I said it clearly students progress to the next grade level regardless of how they do on this test um but that's kind of a that's part of the problem of progress monitoring is that we if we know that students have not yet reached proficiency at that grade level we need to make sure that they have it for the next year through some mechanism that said remember caveat this test is taken in April May there's still quite a bit of school left with learning that goes on so uh so this is kind of it's an inherently flawed process but this is a pretty comprehensive assessment the reason we did this chart also is that the cut scores between uh 750 is always the passing grade no matter what the test I'm sorry no matter math or language arts uh 750 is always the passing point but uh exceeding expectations varies by test so again this is not this is a snapshot so this doesn't tell you any kind of a trend but this can give you a sense of our passing percentages so anywhere between 77 77% or so to 89.6% or so of any specific grade of students is passing the language arts assessment so as far as districts around the state are concerned these are some of the highest Pass rates that you would see around the state um this is a visualization of those via stacked bar graphs where there's a distribution of 100% over those five different areas you can see some trends that we see again these number these these scores are built out um you'll notice the score is like 750 the lowest score you can get is a 650 the highest score you can get is an 850 so they're scaled to a specific range if you're not familiar with how people work with Statistics the reason people use scale scores is to create sort of an even distribution of scores um with a specific point being marked at a cut score for passing and the one of the ways that they do that is they actually bring together all the data from all the test takers even outside of Ridgewood so the distribution of scores can be a little bit different um but but there is effort made to try to keep that standard so it would appear as though our third graders have a lower proficiency rate or last year's third graders have a lower proficiency rate across the district um the seventh graders last year had a I'm sorry the eighth graders last year and the sixth graders had somewhat lower uh proficiency rates whereas our fifth graders last year had a particularly High proficiency rate now again uh there is normal fluctuation between cohorts I've seen that in every District that I've been to um so really what we want to do is try to see longitudinal Trends by cohort and we'll get to that shortly average we do disaggregate by race to see if we have any major disparities um as is the case across American society um typically Asian students perform the highest white students perform typically next highest and Hispanic and black students perform typically behind them in Ridgewood with this analysis we've actually excluded economic students who qualify for free and Rost lunch as economically disadvantaged and the reason that we do that is that I found in my districts and it's true largely in American society that there is a high correlation between uh uh people uh particularly of minority backgrounds who are represented in the free and reduced lunch category so by dis including uh students who are economically disadvantaged and looking at them in a separate analysis we can get a better sense of comparison and that we're not conflating economic disadvantage with race um as you can see here although there is a disparity in the performances it is not a wild disparity um typically gaps in performance between races get alarming when they hit around the 40 percentage points or cell and here we're talking about um we don't have it listed as percentages but uh but these are much much narrower than that we do the same thing here with our I AP students looking for Trends over time uh we see the state average is left there in I'm sorry the full district is left there in red and you can see that we have fairly stable performances what excites me about this and the team we were talking about this before is that you'll note that although the average for students with disabilities in an individualized education plan in many cases is not hitting the proficiency Mark it's not that far off so that's promising for us same thing here for economically disadvantaged students again this is very small numbers of students we actually left the end the end size which is this which is the popul the the sample size which is virtually the population uh here for these groups you can see that we had to Cluster them by grade band because there are so few students in Ridgewood that qualify for free and reduced lunch so the grades three to five band is only 19 students 6 to8 is 27 and grade nine is only 10 students but again even here although we see some downward Trends some upward Trends the reality is that uh all those Trends the averages are pretty close to proficiency which would mean that if we can cross more of those kids across that 750 a it's good for them obviously we want them to be proficient but also with respect to how our district uh it presents publicly would would it would it would really show the efficacy of our programs if we could cross that line Dr sure sorry for um interrupting in the middle but from these charts how do we infer level one and level two how many are like because these are numbers from 650 to 750 range but that that range was on on on a very initial slide so this is based off of scale score so it's and it's an average so we can't necessarily infer the distribution of who scored what score let me see do we have that here no we didn't do that here so I don't have a breakout of the Stacked bar graph regarding where they fit in each category for this but that's that would be an interesting look is that what you're suggesting we should trying to understand is from from these different groups how many were at level one and two yeah I I I don't have the ability to answer that here but that's a great question and that's part of the drill down that I'm going to recommend everybody do did you have a followup question that I mean that's what you're asking for right this like you're you're basically saying can we do this specifically for the economically disadvantaged students because that's what we that's the data that means presented right what what is the range that does not have any meaning the range whether it was 650 700 750 that range does not give any information well I mean information is between one to if whether they are proficient or not so if you're saying three or above is proficient and one or two is not proficient so what we have to look at is how what percent is not proficient sure yeah I mean it's it's a we're talking about a mean as as as a simple representation right but but your your your question is how many are at at level three that truly are that close that could that could go over the line is that what you're saying or or below the line yes because from from that slide are we so if you go back to um the economic disadvantage one uh this one yeah so from this do we know total students so we say like for example grade three to five but What's the total number of students and how many were um not proficient so grades 3 to 5 it was 19 total students 19 total students and how many were not proficient that that we that's just a so part of the weakness of this this whole presentation is we go back and forth between scale score and proficiency rate okay because they're two different measures proficiency rate is what the state cares about the most but I find it beneficial to use scale score from time to time because it gives a little bit more Nuance regarding just just how it's weighted now if there's skewness to the distribution we're not going to see it in a scale score to your point this would give us a sense of skewness if we did an analysis like this for that specific slide and I think that if that th this slide has more meaning than this slide and I think that's your point right yeah but so my ultimate point is um we did focus on economic disadvantage students or students who are struggling by adding the tutoring opportunities um bridge treatman and team found some grants and we implemented some tutoring programs specifically for students who were not able to keep up we also funded linkit and there was another program that we funded right so but linkit was more uh sold to us almost now four years um it has been in the district for elementary schools or at least 3 years that it periodically we'll be doing the assessments those assessments will tell us where we are on njsla scales and it will tell us which subjects or which portions we need to improve and we will be improving so we know um where the students are lacking we know which students needed support we funded both of those so I'm trying to figure out was there any impact of those two solutions one is link it did link it help or did link it not help so far do we see any positive um impact of that what our teachers are able to identif students who needed help in specific subject areas were they able to communicate to their parents they need help in this or what was the action plan there by using linkit and the second one is for tutoring program did any of these students use the tutoring program and did that help because we know our economic St disadvantage students did not make progress year-over Year from the uh grades schools.org ranking for for several years now and that's where we were trying to focus so those are my two questions that did those two programs help um what was the impact okay so we are going to be speaking to that throughout the presentation I think it's going to be it's going to be better if we finish the presentation and then at the end uh if we'll Circ let's Circle back to your question okay desk much simpler question because I'm just trying to make sure that I understand this graph um so looking at grades 3 to five um grades three to five we have a cohort of approximately 19 kids correct that's the end number well that's the end number for the recent year 2024 right so there's a different end for the prior years okay fair enough but for 2024 if I'm looking at the bright yellow or the gold right is I'm reading that to say that all n none of those 19 kids met expectations or hit 750 there is that correct no that's the average of all their performances which means that that a distribution of roughly half of them were above and roughly half or below it's not that's not exactly it but that's close so that's an those bars are average okay this is an average scale that's very okay that's okay thank you I I'm not burst in data so I need to be educate this is why we should break this into appendices because not all these slides are as meaningful right but that's very but that's very helpful thank you but but mathematically if you I don't if you get um economically disadvantage of about 7 looks like 725 it would be very difficult to get to a mean of 725 based on 19 students that would mean some students would have to be 800 or more right I mean it just I just think that what Mr dony was asking about let's just see what the what the percentage of if you use 750 as a cut score instead of doing the average just say percentage up or down that's taking 750 well again so part of the challenge so we're going to get into uh a stable cohort analysis that's going to that's going to be give us a little more information but but part of the challenge of working talking about economically disadvantaged students in Ridgewood is it's such a small population so really in truth these students are not really going to be best served by these analyses these students because there's so few of them are going to be best served by really strong individualized intervention systems that take a look at where they are and provide them with what they need which is really effectively what my big recommendation is going to be which isn't going to be a surprise at all because we've been talking about this quite a bit the data really supports what we've been talking about the need for like quality assurance systems and the ability to look at each student individually and get them what they need um economically disadvantaged students also also typically experience as a population more more more transience meaning because because they're they're having they financial difficulty they have various reasons why they they have less stability at home so they may have to move they may they may change places these numbers don't take into account students who leave and students who come and one of the things that I've experienced uh in both the here and in my prior district is we might have very R robust programs here but if a student shows up a couple months before the test I'm sorry not a couple months there's a cut off on the test any remember what the cut off is they have to be here for something like something like three months or something before the test will actually count or maybe it's less than that um but basically if they show up in a year they won't even get the whole year they take the test their score counts for us they might have been in a school where they really were not doing as good of a job and yet that score still counts for us so this is a very I appreciate all the questions but I should I maybe I should have led with a caveat that there's only so deep and meaningful that we're going to be able to get with their economically disadvantaged students because these these kids have a lot of like a lot of uh environmental factors that they're that are uphill struggles for them that we have to and and they require we have to have a mindset that they're going to require a little more and a little more a little more support okay can I have that session deducted from my time please I think this one yeah yeah yep I agree and that's what I wrote okay so um so for multilanguage learner multilingual Learners this is also a bit complicated because this also these this is not a permanent designation people can only be M multilanguage Learn multilingual learners for a limited period of time up to just a few years so there's a this is heavily subject to migration patterns heavily subject to how quickly students test out and interestingly the faster students take to the English language the faster they get out so this is always changing it's a very hard figure to look at we've done other analyses here that we can look at at another time but suffice to say that in the secondary we see over time you know increasing proficiencies but again uh this is very this is like a when we look at the data this way it doesn't really represent what the program is because the students who are struggling more stay in the program longer but we have to report on it that's why it's here um so this is a look at our proficiency rates again this is not a stable cohort analysis so this includes students who come and go from the district but this takes a look and this also does not look at cohorts it's based on grade so you'll see changes in performance from year to year but that doesn't mean it's the same group of kids from one year to the next we report it this way because this is kind of satisfies one of the requests from the state in terms of comparing great grade level performances from year to year again not a ton of meaning here there's a couple cohorts scored lower than their prior cohorts couple cohorts scored higher and I think now we're going to get well and here's here it is in bar graphs this is actually an important one because if you notice a trend here you can see that our Ela scores were a little lower than the other grades but you can also see the state averages here in the blue and you can see that uh third grade across the state was a little lower and if we go all the way back here to the distribution see this distribution here see how we said our third grade was a little lower right let's jump to this other proficiency graph here see again third grade's a little lower both for us and the state then it seems to kind of bounce up a little bit and then there seems to be pretty stable performances a little bit of a positive bump in seventh and eighth grade um and in ninth grade again across the state level but this is this to me seems fairly stable at that 50% proficiency Mark and we see something similar we're a little lower in third grade then we have a pretty decent amount of stability this is that fifth to sixth grade transition that we identified in the past which we're going to evaluate a little bit more in a minute um and then of course we have like but then further stability across seventh and eth grade and even to nth grade so this is the stable cohort analysis and what we do here is we basically try to identify cohorts of students and we we only look at kids who've actually been with us throughout the period of transition so that we can get a sense as to students who actually have been experiencing our our program so students who recently came into our program students who left our program their scores are taken out of the mix so we're only looking at students who have actually experienced our programs in our schools this is aggregated up to the district level we're also doing analysis at the school level um these Trends do seem to be reflected in the schools to some extent um but they're not felt necessarily evenly across every school I we'll go into more analysis with that with the curriculum committee at another time but suffice to say that there is evidence these do do seem to be districtwide Trends so they seem to be sort of program related so uh this B I know this seems like a quick a little jumble but this is a pretty meaningful jumble because these every one of these lines represents a cohort and each cohort has been stripped of any incomplete data sets which means that these are only students who've been with us for these three years so you can see what these Trends are so if you can follow the colors if you look at say let's see the class of 203 32 that is look over here on the key that's the current fifth graders that's the purple line they took the E the S they took the SLA when they were in fifth grade and then they actually saw an increase going into sixth grade did I say that right no I didn't say that right that was their current fifth grade that means this was their third to fourth grade transition but the reason that we looked at that was because we had seen yeah so it's third to fourth grade was their transition they're are current fifth graders okay so that was so that's just that's a that's positive growth there but that's why it's a partial line uh if you look at let's see the class of 2031 so that's our current sixth graders so they had this was their third grade score their fourth grade score their fifth grade score so they had a positive trend through third fourth and fifth grade class of 2030 they had this positive transition from fifth grade to sixth grade but I'm sorry from fourth grade to fifth grade but this is that fifth grade to sixth grade transition that has troubled us before so that we could compare this to see if this is something that was being felt across the state um I asked honor to pull the data for the class of 2030 at the state level and here you can see this dotted green line right here and it does not seem to have that same downward downward impact so some it appears that something is occurring locally between and sixth grade in language arts now I've already spoken with the uh the ele the Middle School principles about this we've talked about it as in a supervisory team we need to look closely at this because it would appear as though our Trends in language arts at the elementary level are quite strong but something happens going into sixth grade and if you take a look here we'll go back to this chart here you can see it here we see an upward trend of performance and then there's this downward dip right and that is not felt you you can see it here with the state also upward Trend and the state stays flat right that was that green line we saw but our score goes down so something is going on there that we need to understand better and that's what we're currently diving into um we've been diving into and we're diving in even further now um the mark sorry one quick observation to sorry it's a few slides back the U the slide on the uh uh English is a second language this also seems like we have a problem because in everything we are above pretty high above the state I know this very small Co like um sample right and data doesn't mean a whole lot I get it this tells me we have a problem too with the multilanguage or or the multilingual Learners piece since we're we're pretty close so I think that that's a that's a that's a great hypothesis I I I think 's there's a we have to look at that critically um because this assessment is given in English to the students so part of the challenge is that there's also a lang linguistic barrier to them so I think that bears further investigation and that you know we're always look that's the same for the state average I right it's also in English this isn't no the state is the the the two on the right the two bars on the right are the state average oh I see what you're saying so you're comparing these three bars with these I'm just again I realize it's a very small sample size so it's hard to deduct any anything meaningful yeah it's 20 it's 20 students but it does call out to me like because everything else were very high above the state on this we're kind of about the same if not a little bit lower yeah anyway something to to think about for the future not not worth a lot of discussion no no it is a good point um and again part of what we look at too is that there you know something just also worth noting is that within this is again a very diverse subpopulation and generally speaking what we find is and again this is a generalization but generally something I found is that often if a stu if a if a family is moving here and the child's an English language learner but they're moving from um from a country where they are educated in their own language and the parents are educated in their own language and especially if they're coming to Ridgewood and there's not a large community base where they are going to speak that language a lot and they kind of have to learn English that a combination of factors happen the first is that they that they are forced to learn English ER but also there's also can be a high rate of actual English language refusal among those students and those students actually tend to because they're coming from academic backgrounds they tend to um be students that would really boost the scores so there's just my point of bringing up is I I don't I can't tell you with certain that's what's happening here but that's a that's definitely just adds to the dynamic the dynamic situation but I appreciate that observation and I hadn't caught that before that our six to9 students uh in multilingual Learners are actually performing under the States average so I appreciate that that's a good point all right okay so suffice to say that the only that it would appear although there's a flat Trend right here with the class of 2028 which is our current nth graders so this was their transition from seventh grade to eighth grade um oh I also should point out too I realized as we went from this that if you take a look at the slides up here um we showed the full scale of the score 650 to 850 and no one caught I I wish I caught this sooner that this that the distribution of the y axis here is actually only 700 to 800 so it's so the changes are going to look a little more dramatic than they actually are because that's not actually the full the full range okay um so when you look at the class of 2028 just to finish my point uh that's actually that that's that's kind of marginal uh you know it's only one only one one scale score off so generally speaking our Trend seems to be generally positive within language arts especially at the elementary level and then once in middle school there seems to be a positive trend but again looking going back to this visualization we have this positive upward Trend that seems to be more positive and upward than the rest of the state but then whereas the state stays stable we have a drop and we don't seem to be able to hit the passing percentages that we had in 3 through five so it appears that something is going very right in 3 through five but is not being met uh across the other grades so that's something to consider that maybe there is a mismatch of our expectations from between elementary schools and secondary again that's just a that's a working hypothesis but that's what I seem to see over and over again so breaking up the stable cohort by group uh this was a point that I was bringing up I think this is a little bit more of a helpful view again this is a small n sizee but looking across the district you can see that are economically disadvantaged students um were uh and again this is across all grad so this this is a bit of a larger end this this is an end that's worth reporting we saw um students go from uh have a general increase uh from from uh the 2022 to 23 assessment but then it decrease in 23 to 24 and again these are all the same students so again this would indicate that something between 23 and 24 is is uh there's now there could be these the distribution of these students could be across specific grades we could have had a lot of kids in this particular grade experiencing that grade to five to six transition but drilling down to these students is something that we have to do it depends it they are your cohort is different well this is a stable cohort so these are the same kids over three years the state is going up the state has State numbers are going up and Rood numbers have gone down and it's mean it's not the absolute numbers well so so I think I think I think both can be true because from a numbers perspective that's right we see the state going up and going down but being that this is such a small end sizee right three of these kids could be from the same family going through a really horrible at home can youall hear me three of these could be in the same situation where they're going through some sort of terrible like financially induced problematic situation at home and they're just not able to apply them and maybe it occurred right at the moment of this test maybe the week of this test we had a cluster of students who experienced some sort of hardship or tragedy related to their family circumstance and that would that that would be enough to potentially to skew this data that's how small that that size is so that's why we can't be too to your point Miss Brogan we can't be we can't we can't make this to be too Global of a statement right yeah I I just was wondering the significance of it so when I look at going 83 to 84 right so I mean is this we so so so so we don't actually have software that enables us to very rapidly actually do tests for statistical significance um there are some programs that can do that we don't the only one that I know though is qualtrix um and we don't we don't have that one um and I think the answer is it's probably from a statistical analysis perspective based on the size of that sample it's probably not statistically significant but that doesn't mean that it isn't meaningful in the district have n or 12 students you know testing not meeting efficiency one two right to me that's me let's make you know that sure well yeah I agreed and I think Ju Ju Just to put this into context here real quick just to be really just to be really clear this is a state mandated presentation right and there's a certain number of points that we have to hit along the way the stable cohort component is something that we add to it because in my experience just trying to run through the numbers like the state wants you to and they're like oh good job check check you know you reported your scores like we're actually trying to do meaningful analysis but that said these are not necessarily um we don't necessarily have a a robust dissection of this in place to be able to say to be able to answer these questions exactly where we are right now so I do want to clarify that I think that this presentation warrants a follow-up presentation not at a public board meeting don't panic but a follow-up presentation like say to the curriculum committee where we actually break into like like these drill Downs right where we can where we're not necessarily in the public VI we can even look by school like what are what are we seeing with our Trends that's something that we're doing internally and I also would like to get to a place you know we're do to be do except there's a group of students who might who AR scoring in four or five C what are we doing for those students and that to me is being that's what I he so if you do it just to your brick you you've lost MERS no but we can share those takeaways away what I'm saying is like all these analyses I mean we're all sitting here having a good laugh about how ridiculous all these slides are and how how long this takes but at the end of the day you're a board that cares about how your students are performing right and I'm a superintendent who really cares also but it's important at the same time that we acknowledge what the data may show that there's also limitations to what the data can show and so our goal of this conversation is just to try to look at it from different lenses in different ways but I can't without a good comparison set of data it's hard hard to necessarily draw out what what we can from this I will say though you're all segueing very nicely into what my recommendations are going to be all right but Dr I just want to add that the the details that you're going depth that you're going into to analyze what the root causes are um I really appreciate it because unless we identify what the root causes are or where the problems are we cannot fix it exactly and just to be clear this none of the data in here is immediately action that's not the nature of this presentation this is just how does it look like we're doing based on this one assessment that's really all this is again big segue to some takeaways I have at the end and they're concise don't worry all right so this is looking at us by race um these are larger n sizes although we combine Hispanic and black category because those are each pretty small together they're not as small I don't think we have an end size here but again we exclude economic disadvantage excluding economic disadvantage all of our racial categories appear to be on Trend we've seen this a couple years running now this to me is actually something that is like a bit of a good thing that we I think we can say is a good probably a good thing because we've seen the trend before because if we're serving students we can't we can't take responsibility for where every student is starting from right because that's like that there's other factors outside of school that are causing that but if every C every group year-over-year in racial categories is showing positive growth then that is an indicator that we are having a fairly Equitable impact academically at least as far as this test is concerned on racial categories all right so I think I so um I'm GNA give a little bit of a I'm I'm G to try to pave the way for this one a little smoother so we got a sense of the feel of the slides and what they all meant the math portion is set up exactly the same way so we probably can go just a touch quicker but I think there's also more to see in math right particularly we see that fifth to sixth grade Trend we also see a general downward Trend although it does seem to be experienced by the state as well we also have a complication that we can really only look at this data up to about seventh grade because then students get into content areas and we've had the geometry first sequence and that's made it a little harder to understand our data compared to others data so I'll be I'll be calling those out as we go through okay again participation rates are high not a lot to see here not a very not not a very meaningful slide other than the fact that most kids take the test um this is again just a bar chart of the same data and when you see Algebra 2 just to be clear the only kids who are taking Algebra 2 when you'll see these datas data sets are the double accelerated students because that means that they took geometry and algebra one in middle school so their and their njsla assessment is algebra 2 no students outside of the double accelerated track take the algebra 2 njsla okay again same thing distribution of scores Mark s sorry that that's true across the state no that's true for us so what I'm saying is so Algebra 2 could be a tenth grader outside of rwood depending on when they teaching how no hold on hold on a second it's a good question Mr nembo do you want to help me I'm going to say that actually the only only reason you'd be taking Algebra 2 from most other schools would be because you're on a double accelerated track is that right yes Mo for most for this part yes but we did have a percentage that didn't pass so I did look into that data and the percent the small percent that didn't pass actually ended up being a student that wasn't part of the double accelerated so it might have been a transfer student that needed to take the state test because maybe they hadn't previously taken it in the past that would be my only explanation for why would be in other districts in New Jersey Algebra 2 test must be ninth grades yes so they they prefer Algebra 1 over geometry so if students on an accelerated track so if they're coming in freshman year in geometry and they're going to Algebra 2 as a sophomore in other districts they might end up taking the algebra 2 but for Algebra 2 would always be your double accelerated or your accelerated track students typically so that's my question so you're saying in another District if a 10th grader is taking Algebra 2 they could be taking the engine SLA Algebra 2 test yes potentially if they hadn't taken the exam previously got it so that's your original statement thank you thank you for that Mr nembo all right so again here 750 is still passing um and then there's different cut scores based on the test for the for for exceeding expectations snapshot of our percentages here this Bears let's see now this is I'm going to explain this this is grades three through seven so grades three four five and six all students the entire population of that grade are taking that assessment grade seven is the first grade where we have students who would be taking the double accelerated geometry and so those students are no longer participating so we would expect to see a dip in the Prof in the percentage proficient because our highest achieving math students are now taking a different test that make sense to everybody all right so this dip to 66.8% is something that we would expect to some extent okay I'm gon so this we're not changing anything in seventh grade we are adding the math 8 for 8th grade but seventh grade the students who are not in double accelerated program we may we can see a dip in par particip patient because other kids are taking the double accelerated one but from those who are taking the exam we should not be seeing 66% so but your your sample your sample size is now smaller and it's the quote unquote weaker students I have to put it that way right that are taking but the so no so those are not weaker students those are at grade level right so the students who are double accelerated or accelerated are taking an advanced course but the students who are taking seventh grade exam are at that seventh grade level so we should be teaching at say seventh grade students at seventh grade level yeah so so you're speaking in the world of shoulds and yes should ideally objectively they're not take they're not taking a test that's not appropriate for their grade level meaning that objectively we'd want to see theoretically all of our students students proficient right so it's not like they're mismatched for the test I think that's the point you're making right in other the kids are mismatch the students who are in accelerated program are Advanced students or they have accelerated but everybody else is at the grade level so if they are at their grade level they or or even if we I think we call Double accelerated because we are even in sixth grade we are skipping some sixth grade they become Advanced everybody's advanced but when it come yes but when it comes to taking the njsla grades three through six are the entire population of the grade so the so the sample is basically the population of the grade when we get to grade seven we round up because they're taking a different course the the we our our highest achieving math students I wouldn't call the other students weaker students I would just say with the respect to I know why you're saying that I would just say we're taking out our our highest achieving math kids from that population who would certainly all be proficient and we're reducing the total population size and those were 100% passing scores pretty much so that's so so we would expect to see in Aggregates in seventh grade an impact from siphoning off a significant number of proficient students that's all I'm saying so we can look at it again here again there's normal fluctuation between cohorts always but we have a pretty pretty high pretty high proficiency for uh distribution in grade three not as high in grade four a little higher again in grade five not as high in grade six again this is that grade fifth to sixth grade transition we've been talking about right we had a dip here um there was also this dip here in grade three and grade four we've talked about that a little too and then the grade the transition from grade six to grade seven this is actually we have this is where we have to account for the fact that the highest achieving students who would almost C who would almost certainly all be passing have been cycled out to a different course here's where what is it go ahead yeah I mean you have kind of the inverse for the third grade here right where they're stronger in math but weaker in ela so something is clearly yeah and we're going to look at that in comparison to State average shortly so I want to be really clear on on the grade seven math what I'm looking at is about a third of the students in grade seven these are the grade seven students taking grade seven njsla math not the double accelerated the grade seven students a third of this grade seven test takers are approaching or partially meeting or not meeting right 25% 7 % whatever so cor about a third so a third of our grade seven math students are not meeting right and if I put that in in numbers it's it's about 92 90 90 90 students close to students but but I think I want to just I think I want to restate what Dr Schwarz was saying before differently but Dr Schwarz keep me honest here I think the issue he's alluding to is what what you're comparing against right so so when you're comparing against other State uh districts that don't have the double accelerated or accelerated this is the theory that I'm understanding right is you're now goingon to in their cohorts they will have those stronger students those mathematically stronger students are in those seventh grade cohorts right because they're not theoretically going you're not siphoning them off in those other districts they are staying in seventh grade and they're testing in their seventh grade njsla and so our performance is naturally going to be lower because you have you're up against a stronger cohort period that's my understanding that may be a comparison but there's an absolute number that whether you scored minimum like the passing score or not right that's 750 number and I'm just looking at Absolute number if I take these students it's about 90 students who are not getting to the point you're still you're looking you're comparing against the percentages no this is not no this is this is not a state comparison this is an internal look based on the the percentages the the approaching the meeting and the exceeding are all based on the state uh numbers right the state averages so that's what you're comparing at so it's almost like you're going to a a play a game with your soccer team but five of your starting players are missing right and so how are you going to perform against the other team you're not going to do as well because five of your top players are sitting on the bench is that correct or is it is it a curve is it a curve can I insert wait can I just insert something else which is so one thir the onethird that are either approaching that are clearly not meeting okay this approximately onethird right that's not one-third of our seventh graders it's one-third of the contingent of seventh graders that took seventh grade math right right so so it I don't know where your number of 90 students comes from but if you're calculating it based on the total number of St I'm calculating 368 students who took the test from that 368 or 361 I used 36 from the kid that took that test right I'm doing 34% of 368 so that that came to 92 but it's 361 and 66.8 so it may be 89 88 89 yes I'm I think I'm following what everything you're saying and everybody is saying true statements so like that is about the number of students yes yes it it is does involve having those students being cycled out but the missing piece of this puzzle is let me get to it hold on I'm going to come to this if we can if we jump ahead I'm sorry this is this is not in the best order jump ahead to this so this is not scale score this is percent passing and we see this downward Trend right this is a concerning looking downward Trend correct right but there is a similar downward turn Trend with within the state as well but it seems to level out right this gets all wacky because we have our unique sequence so we have to so from here over from geometry on that's we have to have a different convers ation and from math 7 we have to acknowledge the fact that we've tried off maybe that's not the right word we've we've given a we've offered a more aggressive path to our highest achieving students so they're no longer in this mix so if you look at it from this lens from a proficiency perspective our proficiency is actually considering that it seems in for some of the years has been fairly stable but for this last year it did see a drop off but Dr sh that's where my question is that is that is that separation from what what state is teaching for starts at geometry level or does it start even at sixth grade because my understanding what we we and M correct me if I'm wrong we say everybody in is accelerated at sixth grade and the students who are taking the test are double Advanced so everybody is Advanced everybody in from middle school onwards we are teaching everybody all students are accelerated compared to what state is or state standards are asking for or so everybody is at a one level up and then those students who take the test are double Advanced so every student in middle school is Advanced so they we are probably not teaching to the test right we are already teaching an advanced yeah teaching we're teaching on an aggressive track to get so they have the option to go off with is that an accurate statement it is a more enhanced curriculum but the single acceleration actually occurs in the eth grade when they go from that pre-algebra to the AL well geometry at the time so that's where the single acceleration jump is but we are an accelerated more rigorous curriculum in sixth and seventh grade to prepare them for that jump when they get to eth grade so the double acceleration starts at 8th grade the double accelerated they hit the double accelerator when they get to eth grade because they're typically they're onee advance and then when they get to the eth grade now they're two years Advance okay and so also too to add to that we've expanded the percentage of students that have actually joined the double accelerated so over time that will impact our seventh grade scores because we have more students going into the double acceler ated which is taking away from our seventh grade scores so I think um because I had this conversation with Dr Schwarz I I think that um next year should be a more telling year because next this year we implemented the supplemental classes for seventh and eth grade we put eth grade math back in right we've made some changes so the year that we're looking at was a similar Dynamic to 2020 three yes right but we only implemented math eight for e8th grader we haven't done anything for seventh grade have we yeah we only have the supplemental elective for e8th grade right now to supplement that eth grade curriculum so we didn't do it for seventh not for seventh grade we have I'm sorry so we have identified a problem in seventh grade and there will be some recommendation for that if if about 90 students are not meeting then it's it's much beyond our economically disadvantaged or special need students so this number is should be looked at and that's where link it could become helpful as well and as we're we this is our first full year with linkit but even just looking at this data what I did was I looked at the students that fell between a 745 to a 749 that could be one question or part of a question that they answered incorrectly and so with with linkit which our progress monitoring tool we can actually get ahead of that be able to support these students that in that case that ends up being about 25 students that fell in that range that could have easily passed if they had a little bit of support throughout the year to help them do you even have that GL granular detail to see not just one question but what type of question whether it's more conceptual word problems okay thank you so uh thank you for that Mr Nimbo so just to again with with the change though it's still going to be complicated to interpret the high school level math classes because the kids are going to be experiencing them at different times so here's a great example of that geometry 7 these are our double accelerated students taking geometry locally in seventh grade so this is only our double accelerated students they have a 92% proficiency rate am I saying that correctly Mr Nemo now geometry 8 if you remember there was a decision years ago to get rid of math 8 so that means that every single student regardless of whether they have an IEP or a disability or whether they're a multi- language learner every single student must take a 10th grade math class in eth grade that is why the P the passing percentage rate drops off significantly here that's a 10th grade test by the state's standards and all eighth graders take it algebra 8 these again are double accelerated students they took geometry in seventh grade taking algebra eth grade no surprise 100% of them were proficient and you can see the end sizes here right algebra at the high these our these are our nonaccelerated math students without our without our single or double accelerated math students in the mix so again you see it you see a suppression in the scores because all single and double accelerated students are I'm sorry that's not accurate it's still the double accelerated students out because everybody is single accelerated yeah so that's considered the single acceleration yes so again so this is the same number as this number it goes from 29 to 59 which makes sense now because now they're they already had algebra so they're doing better on this right and then Algebra 2 once again that is only our double accelerated students and they again have a very high passing M do you want to add to that um so for the algebra 59% that would be considered the single acceleration and so what I would say with that one with the scores is previously algebra was taught in the middle school and then with these scores it's now at the high school and so what we're looking into with our evidence statements is finding areas where we can just like we did with our sixth grade scores last year finding areas where we can address the specific curriculum cont but then also we just expanded linkit to nth grade which is should help with our scores as well thank you here's a distribution of the same again it's just another way to look at it e these are our so these are our this isn't labeled really clearly these are our these are this is this this is the student the total student body less the double accelerated students so these are them taking uh eighth grade geometry this is that 29% passing rate so you see a rather large distribution of scores in the approaching level for grade nine math Algebra 1 again you see that larger number so there's some progress there but by this time they're being tested on Algebra 1 and they have actually taken um Algebra 1 in this test they're taking geometry without taking Algebra 1 and the state assumes that they've taken both and then here we have uh algebra one from 10th grade and Mr NBA would I be accurate in say these are students who repeated algebra one at the high school level so this would be a population of students most like most of them would be students that took geometry freshman year which is primarily our transfer students who are coming from out of District that are not on a single accelerated track we did have some students a small percentage repeat geometry for 9th grade which means they would take Algebra 1 10th in 10th grade so this population would primarily be any student who repeated geometry in 9th grade and had to wait till 10th grade to take their test or anybody who transferred into the district to take geometry freshman year and then algebra one their 10th grade year thank you okay these are our double accelerated students and again without much surprise very high percentage rate very very high percentage passing rates this is our distribution of scores by race excluding economic disadvantage again my takeaway here is that we do not see um too wild of a dis of a difference between scores definitely some difference between scores I think that that we would benefit greatly again as we discussed in a prior Slide by having the Stacked bar graph for this data as well I think that would be more informative than just an average scale score so we'll look to do that next time and we'll do that through a further analysis again similar similar conversation around our IEP students um they are following compend as the rest of this District average um they seem to be doing actually slightly better in math 7 I want it makes me wonder if R turning math8 would improve their proficiency rates as well in at as they approach that eighth grade level again a stack bar graft here would be helpful here's our economically disadvantaged students again again similar Trends again small n size um but again a stacked bar graph here would be more informative for us multilanguage Learners with grade level distributions here again you have to see the end size on the left grades three to five we do see larger ends so the numbers there become a little clearer um it does appear that we seem to have better performances here in math perhaps that the the language is less of a barrier for them here um this is a comparison of passing percentages this is the same slide as before this is not the stable cohort but you can see that we have a pretty significant variation in the distribut in the in the changes in scores from grade to grade cohort to cohort um so this kind of highlights just differences in the cohorts and then let's get to and then I showed you this one already before this is the percentages uh passing by by course and you see that again that downward Trend that the state is also experiencing it's not clear to me if that's because the test is getting harder or if because in the post-pandemic era we just are seeing students having fewer and fewer math strengths but this is in our stable now we're getting to the stable cohort again so we have fewer cohorts to look at because we can't track cohorts when they're taking different tests across the high school math courses but we can look at the class of 29 the class of 2030 and the class of 2031 remember the class of 2030 is that class that's that transitioned from fifth grade to sixth grade last year and here again you can see the similar Trend the class of 2030 uh which is the blue also once again saw a decrease from elementary to middle school and further the class of 2032 which are our current fifth graders saw this trend uh between third and fourth grade of our math scores going down that was the same thing that we observed in the class of 2031 last year where they also went down from third to fourth grade so it Bears it Bears conversation here something is going on districtwide between third and fourth grade where we are actually losing some proficiency if you look at the state average here again there seems to be a general increase if we go back to this chart here there does seem to be at the state average however here in percentage in passing percentage the other one member scale score say passing percentage there is a decrease at the state level between third and fourth so that perhaps that offers some explanation however when we look at scale score it is pretty consistent we looked at the class of 2030 however just across the state level so this is not that third to Fourth transition rather this is this fifth to sixth transition we can see at the state level there's a decrease but we can see in the district level there's actually an even bigger decrease so you can kind of see this slant here it seems to be a little stronger here at our it within district and if you look back here you can see that the 2030 across the state the class of 2030 did experience a dip as we just saw from 2023 to 2024 but it does not seem to be as Stark and as steep as the change up here from our which group is 2030 is the blue here now again remember this is not the full spectrum on the y- AIS so it's it's a little the change the the shift is a little bit exaggerated because it's not fully zeroed out it's not it's not the Min and Max are not at their ma as extended as they could or should be but nevertheless um I generally don't like to see any kind of a negative Trend in student performance on an assessment any questions or comments on this okay looking at I AP and economic disadvantage um our stable cohort across the district seemed to go down uh in this area however our economically disadvantage students um saw a what appears to be a onepoint uh change which is almost certainly not statistically significant um our IEP saw a flat score this last year by race we see we do see a negative Trend here um again it's hard to say whe the extent to which this is significant but our white students and our Black and Hispanic students seem to be experiencing a three-year negative Trend in their math performances um whereas our Asian students and our two students identifying with two or more races which again that's a tricky category because there's many different combinations of races students could be that stayed fairly flat but our Asian students saw relatively a flat performance between 2022 and 23 but then they saw an increase while everyone else saw a decrease now the state average shows a general increase um so this would seem to indicate that we have something something going something going on here that we need to investigate a little further right any last questions about math while we're here well Mrs zembo is going to give a last slide at the end so we we'll give you a chance to come back did you want to add anything to what I just shared oh just again back with the algebra scores that the fact that we eliminated maate would also impact those scores too so bringing back mathy which is foundational in preparing students for not only Algebra 1 but also geometry as well because it's prerequisite skills for both of those I think we'll see an uptick in scores in the future for next year may be great can I ask you just to confirm did you just say earlier that the difference between let's say 758 and 759 is like one question on average it could so if they had like a 745 to 749 that could potentially be one question away from meting expectations okay so this is really not that from a just compare looking at the mean averages to see a drop of one is really not that significant yeah one would be minimal but if you saw like a larger jump then you'd want to look into that further and again it's hard to say the extent to which these shifts are significant or just kind of random okay and as far as our science results uh we have less data to work with here but again this is our this is our participation rate again barly high this is our participation rate uh by the numbers you know high schoolers we've seen a little bit less uh commitment to the test but nevertheless still most of the population is participating proficiency levels are a little different 200 is passing here and our overall percentage percentages um we see in this this is just this is that snapshot look so this is just last year so we see a distribution between we had 60% in fifth grade roughly 60% roughly 40% in or 41% in the e8th grade and roughly 52% in uh 11th grade this is just a distribution in stacked bars so you can see the extent to which students are Advanced proficient or below proficiency or near proficiency this is by race we see a similar distribution to what we saw before but no major disparities at least not not what I would consider fully major but definitely something to note and try to do something about um as far as IEP scores are concerned um these are these seem to be much lower uh much further away for proficiency than they were in math and language arts so that's something we'd want to take a look at a little further this is our mean scale score uh particularly for economically disadvantaged students multilingual Learners State average and the district average are included there as well for comparison again MultiLing lingual Learners are really we would need to do a significant Trill down to be able to make it Greater inference there and then as far as economically disadvantaged students um this is only 25 students um and again we're going to let Mrs Taylor speak a little bit about her interpretations of the test in a second uh comparison uh again these are different cohorts so we can when we see that green and we see that red that doesn't mean that the same group of kids is scoring differently um but this is what it looks like in terms of per percent proficiency over time think the most useful element of this is just the fact that we have a comparison of the state over three years and you can see that there's been some uh some some some stability from year to year across the state but uh definitely higher performance in 11th grade lower in eighth grade and higher in fifth grade see our trend all that somewhat here last year's cohort in 11th grade uh seemed to have a slight bump in their proficiency can I ask you something in general um what is the reason why this that it just not just RPS but the state that the proficiency levels are a quarter and part of the reason and one of the major ones that we've come up with as a science supervisor group they do not give partial credit for any question so that's one of the main reasons and another um we do not receive any evidence statements we don't receive question types we really just receive three main categories for Content one of which combines physical science so chemistry and physics are combined in one category there's no way to differentiate which standard is or is not being met to address that from a curricular standpoint um and we also receive three different question types but we don't see like we received a certain question type in a given content area or um how difficult the question was or was it you know a test question that only Ridgewood receive we don't receive any of that data to go on you do get partial Credit in ela and math okay got it okay yeah anything um any subject matter that's that you can see presents an issue for our students so is it chemistry or physics or no they don't they differentiate they have Earth and space life science and then physical so they combine physics and chemistry into one so for a high school um breakdown we wouldn't be able to determine which course would be an issue if physical science was going to be lower or even if it was students who were not taking physics by their junior year and didn't take it till senior year we can't break that break that down um when I look at the middle school where you would have seen all of the Sciences in a spiral curriculum through throughout the entire grade band you would be able to indicate um I mean I wouldn't know if it was in the seventh grade or the eighth grade though we do tend to frontload a lot of our Earth Science in eth grade since they don't take it fully in the high school that way it's a little more fresh when they do take the 11th grade exam um but what I've really focused on and making sure that we have IND District consistency between our buildings and between our teachers because I don't receive enough data to really make full curricular changes otherwise given the um Statewide uh concerning levels of proficiency which is at a quarter do you expect the state to be more robust in terms of what they give you as from a from a supervisory perspective so this improves we have been asking um so when they purchased the assessment package with the state through Pearson with Ela Math and Science they purchased all components of that for ELA and math and they only purchased this this portion for science my understanding is that this is the last year of that assessment package and we're hoping now I mean that we would then receive more data because it is frustrating you know you're we're working on this in District and teachers are working on it and we're trying to promote the exam we want students to do better I was excited to see that our 11th grade students did better because we've been trying to say you know please try you know you're very strong students and you know they've had a lot of testing leading up to the science exam it's the last one they take after all the um other NJ slas and their AP testing so you know I was excited to see a bump there um which was you know the state went down a little bit but we did go up so I'm hoping that some of our efforts are are working there thank you you mentioned the IP students um had a dip in science as opposed to as far as their efficiency was as opposed to uh Ela and math but I I looked and noticed that it it's the same that's a state Trend if I'm not mistaken right so uh for ELA and math we were just a tad above for I students the state average and that seems to also be the trend here in in science so um so just something to consider when looking at that it's great catch Harrison thank you so then here we have our average science scale score again this is just a different way to look at it as opposed to proficiency percentages so this is the percent proficient and this is the actual scale score and then the last slide just is really something we have to report on is the dynamic learning Maps results but the reality is that they are actually individualized so uh we really uh there's really not much to report just kind of a funny anomaly in code um that we're just acknowledging here so that way when we're reviewing qac we can show that we've acknowledged it but really they're they're they're highly individualized very few students qualify for the dlm almost all of our students with IEPs I should say all the majority of our students with IEPs do take the regular njsla all right so next we have some uh some some um analysis and action plans so um I think first up we have uh we have Dr walshes with us I know that um uh Dr s and Susan n were also kind of your counterparts here at K12 but um I want to give you an opportunity to share a little bit about uh some some some of what you're seeing here and some of your recommendations sure so I did a closer look um as it states up there um the passing rate at grades 36 and eight were the lowest so I did a closer look um for grades three and six and I it turns out that overall um for grades 3 to six vocabulary is the lowest scoring of the three subscores of informational text literature and vocabulary scoring um 10 percentage points below um informational text and literary and literary texts I also then zoomed in on each grade level and each subscore and um because with grade three they had dropped um two points from 2023 so I took a closer look to see well where exactly did they drop and on informational texts grade three dropped um eight points from 2023 and grade four dropped four points from 2023 and grade six um moving from grade five to grade six um dropped Four Points so informational text seems to be an area of when you look closely at the um underneath why they dropped informational text is the area and vocabulary has historically scored low over the past um five years compared to the other subscores then I took a look also at the standards at the evidence statements with the standards and three standards seem to be a trend across all grades 3 to six uh the first standard um they're all analysis based standards the first one is analyzing how and why the um individuals and events um develop um and interact over um throughout a text the second standard is also analysis but it's AIT regarding the structure of the text and the third standard is um comparing contrasting various uh two texts two or more texts uh related to a topic or a theme and then finally uh taking a look at our next steps um I would like to start first with grade three and a closer look uh taking a closer look at the foundational skills and because you're coming off of K2 where we have that solid foundation so some steps to take with grade three would be to take a closer look at our word study scope and sequence and really ensure that we're emphasizing multi-cab words so taking all those rules they've learned in k12 and putting them in bigger words and also more f which is the meaning of of the word Parts uh also something else that we've put in place this year are those dibles assessments those foundational literacy assessments that we have in place for K2 we are carrying it up to grades three and Beyond to really Target what is the area of need in terms of of foundational literacy skills uh another initiative that we have in place um for this year is shared reading which um you revisit a text a short text every day over the course of five days with the class and you read that text aloud so there's a fluency piece in there for grades three and Beyond so moving beyond grade three and the foundational skills the next areas really um are to Target vocabulary in grades 3 to 5 um and also well I'll start with vocabulary so in terms of uh vocabulary development um something that we've put in place already is a focus on the read aloud and we were fortunate to have Molly NES come this year um she's the author of read alouds for all Learners and it was um she one of the things that she focused on was vocabulary that there are two types of ways to teach vocabulary when you're reading a read aloud one is to teach so go deeper about that vocabulary word and another one is to explain so you touch on it you tell what it means and you move on um she also touched on the importance of building the background knowledge um which lends itself to deepening vocabulary as well uh also with the shared reading that we have in place this year one of the L each day you read the text aloud to build fluency but every day you have a different lens that you're looking at that short text and one of those days is a vocabulary lens um and in grades four and five not just third grade we would take a look at the scope and sequence to really ensure that that morphology um actually kive uh morphology is in place and emphasized um in terms of a final um so I've touched on foundational skills vocabulary development the next area is something that I've spoken about and presented and that's uh in June but that's the importance of knowledge so to put topic knowledge as a foundation to support growth in both informational and literary text so with read aloud and shared reading um to the areas we've really built in this year both of those um lend themselves to building to reading multiple texts around a common topic to to deepen our knowledge I just also want to talk um about the transition um from fifth to sixth grade we started um this past year with articulation opportunities between grades five and six we will continue with that um as well in the future uh some things I would like to see put into place are shared instructional expectations that go from K to five and Beyond uh and also to I we've done this a little bit but to really be more purposeful and directed directed in terms of our interrater observations so how do you how do you um establish and maintain consistency so we've got six elementary schools each one having probably three sections a grade give or take uh how do you maintain that and how do you get that happening well oh sorry one of things are the instructional expectations that we do have in place uh at the elementary level so for each area Reading Writing word study we have instructional um expectations that are set and what that looks like when when we go you know when we're going and we're observing I hand um actually at the start of the year I have instructional expectations posted that I hand out they're um and they're communicated at my um not just my um observation conferences but at all of my district Gatherings with the teachers grade level meetings you know I know that we don't normally pull it apart from um school to school but this but there are is data out there that you know that indicates schools so that's why I'm look at the consistency are you are you seeing um more support is needed for our newer teachers or uh more support for our more senior teachers who may have been doing this differently in the past that maybe need to change some of their instructional um ways yes I think both yes even just thinking about the Molly Nest professional development you know you think read aloud oh I know how to do a read aloud uh but even I learned you know it's just it's a great refresher and is this um is it talked about at the staff meetings at the individual buildings when they are meeting on Mondays or Wednesdays or whatever that is when the principal's meeting with their staff is this discussed again and reinforced there are there's communication between me and the principls and then the principls and the teachers so yes the um the communication continues at the staff meetings thank you all right thank you Dr Walsh and did we I'm sorry did we touch on the uh no red ink at all I know that was uh that was from the uh from the secondary from uh yeah okay um M nembo do you want to share your observations about math sure so observations for math we saw a 10% increase from sixth grade scores last year to this year um last year I reported back with the evidence statement that we had noticed specific areas in our curriculum that needed to be adjusted um specifically to our number lines and positive negative numbers and how we were presenting those questions to our students not necessarily the skill itself the teachers really analyze that data they really pushed forward with it link it scores they the first linked exam they took was in January and the teachers were texting and emailing right after the student took it saying how do I analyze these results so the teachers really really utilized that data as soon as they could and I think that contributed to this 10% increase for their students because they were really motivated by the scores but then also by adjusting our curriculum with what we had noticed in our evidence statement last year and that's where the evidence statements are helpful um njsla evidence statement data identified specific curriculum and instructional adjustments needed in 6 through 8 I wasn't seeing so last year I had talked about sixth grade we had 10 out of the 14 score um questions were underneath the same unit of study this year only one of those scores that were on or below fell in that category so analyzing that data really helped us for this year for seventh grade I'm noticing it's not as many questions that were falling onon Below in that area but it was falling under expressions and equations and also a few were under proportions so really getting into what does that look like on our assessments what is that not even just our Assessments in our instruction because our instruction will guide will prepare them for our assessments so for seventh grade that is what we're looking at for improving for next year and then eighth grade was the geometry scores which were a challenge to analyze because we were on our Below in many of those questions because the students just didn't have the prerequisites not necessarily that they didn't learn the content it's just when any geometry textbook resource state exam is going to assume students had Algebra 1 so you could teach the content and many of the questions will be basic of that content but they always integrate questions that in incorporate Algebra 1 as you get further into the content um so our action plan is to continue to do our data analysis of the njsla scores but then also our linkit scores so over the summer I had met with both of the Middle School principles we analyzed the data of the students that did not pass from fifth grade into sixth grade from sixth into seventh grade and we started creating groups to put into academic skills that can support those students as soon as they walk in the door or have an an academic skills is quarterly and students can move in and out of that program so being able to identify the students that would benefit from that and not even just the students that didn't pass we also looked at the students that just passed because again those are students that one question or part of a question could have easily been not passing so we're not only looking at students who didn't pass but we're also looking at students who just passed so that's something that we're working on with the middle school with njsla and the link it and comparisons between the two of them um addressing specific curriculum concern demonstrated in the state performance integrating more njsla style questions into our daily instruction so some of these questions the students are capable of answering but they're select all that app they're a drag and drop they're a matching and if if a student has never been exposed to that type of questioning especially a select all that apply that can be challenging on a state test to be able to that's a critical thinking question you it's no longer just choosing one answer and moving on to the next you have to go through each of your answer options so we're working on incorporating that into our daily instruction and our homework and other practice opportunities we have for our students and then provide ongoing professional development focused on effective strategies for teaching challenging Concepts this year we have our sixth grade team going to Nancy Schultz conquer math and she really focuses on the three stages of learning and a lot of times we end up jumping to that abstract level of learning where we're saying to students solve 2x plus 3 equals 10 but we're not building that foundational knowledge of why they're doing that so in sixth grade they're actually learning about how to be symbolic about it how to use manipulatives which they do use a lot of manipulatives in middle in elementary school and when they get to middle school that kind of drops off so by creating that symbolic piece where students can actually manipulate how they're getting the answer to that equation and then moving it to the pictorial stage where if they don't have they're not going to have manipulatives in front of them when they take exams the state tests when they take other exams so moving that to a pictorial stage where I may not have a manipulative but I can draw out my I could draw out the manipulatives that I have created in my in my head and then moving to that abstract stage and I think in the long run when we're starting with sixth grade with that our seventh grade teachers are set to go for next year and sixth grade teachers will do year two of that so they'll be going to another five sessions as we start to build that with our students going from sixth grade to seventh grade to eighth grade I think we're going to see a huge impact with how they're doing in algebra because they're really going to truly understand what they're doing when they're solving equations and not just saying because it's addition I'm going to subtract if there're like a lot of times we learn the rules and the rules aren't going to help them remember in the long run but actually understanding what they're doing is what's going to help them when they get to the higher level math classes quick question um you know as we discussed kind of drilling down you know as you're analyzing all the data are you drilling down to school and sections as well make sure that there's consist teacher by school great thank you and then I'll add what Miss O'Neal had put at the end she identified grade four as a priority cohort for targeted sustained professional development and she also mentioned that she'll be sending the grade four teachers to conquer math for that conceptual understanding thanks that's great um so just in your opinion how how important are these stat tests are they a foundation so that we um can identify areas where we need to teach CH uh students these skills or are we teaching actually to the test so that they get a better score so that we look better I think the state test is a test that students take one day out of the year I think they do get great instruction on a day-to-day basis um but I think that it is always good to expose them like when I'm talking about the different styles of questions they are great questions to ask rather than they're requiring students to think abstractly to go deeper into a question so yes they do align to what there they're going to see on the state test but it is it is a great way to get students to think Beyond just a basic response um thanks Mr um Miss Broan I just have a followup from you on that um what do you recommend as an assessment to see if our we what we are teaching is working or not if the state test is not a good uh standard how should we there should be an assessment if if this is not an acceptable assessment what is the alternative assessment I'm not saying it's not my question was is it is it acceptable and I was asking the professionals right so but if you're asking the professionals so State the state tests are also designed by the professionals people who are running the doe and um professionals who move up to that uh from teaching from supervision from Administration to doe and they are helping design all these tests and our overall New Jersey how education system should work and if we are questioning that um do you have an alternative in mind are you suggesting an alternative how to assess what's how we are doing well I mean the state test is is a one you know is a a snapshot of one day for four days an hour or two hours or whatever it is right so um I mean I think that you need to look at more than just the state test so do we align with uml is it aligned to link it what are our Assessments in our classroom so it is a bundle and that's why I look at this and I ask the question you know is there a big difference you know in terms of 764 as our as our scale score or 766 you know so I think we have to you know I I am cons I was always concerned that you would spend our teachers would spend an enor enormous amount of time teaching to the test and losing the kids if the test questions and the purpose is instructional and it allows us to keep moving our students forward then it's a good process if we are simply just teaching so that they do well in a test so that District looks better then that really isn't the purpose to me of an assessment so I you know that's why I asked the questions about uh the validity of the test what do those scores really mean um and then how are our kids really performing on other assessments and when we get to the high school then we are looking at APS SATs acts if they're still taking those tests and we're looking at their grades and distribution of those grades so I mean it's it's a package deal to make um this is just a snapshot I understand we're spending a lot of time talking about it but I think you're still questioning the validity and but you're not uh proposing an alternative and just at the start of the meeting when we started the meeting you actually celebrated students who scored um significantly good uh marks in one specific test on one day and we celebr we do we do that with our P sco our AP students too right so so if you are celebrating those students but if you're questioning the validity of this and I think my bigger question is if not this test then how are we Iden how are you recommending to identify the students who need help I'm I'm least concerned about how many students are making it to the top level five I'm more concerned about students who are not able not proficient at their grade level I think I already said that though yeah you mentioned the difference between 264 and 266 you're going back to difference between High Achievers or or people who are already proficient that what's the difference between 264 versus 266 I'm more concerned about students who are not at 740 or below so if State say 750 is the minimum passing score for being proficient at a grade level and if we have students who are not proficient if we don't identify that problem in early years if we don't provide them support that they need whether they are economically disadvantaged or whether they have a family issue or whether they just need more help learning if we don't provide that help in the early years those students will go off track in their future years too so it's very important to identify that early and help those students that's why we are here as a public school and if this is not the right way if you're questioning this then I'm open to hear what is the alternative that you're proposing or you have proposed for several years now here I think I already said that my concern is for those students who haven't reached the proficiency level I think I began this conv right but you're you're you're not recommending an alternative way to I think I am recomend actually it's not clear to me but um if you could clarify but it it the for me not only does this njsla highlight um or identify areas that you can um improve or provide additional support and the and the cohort of students that would benefit from additional support and attention it's the fact that there is um a comparative basis there's no other test that I know of that gives you the state average and uh and then provides additional um software packages like iel or whatever to you know to help you disaggregate and and really drill down on the questions um so but you know I I'm I'm open to hearing about um alternative tests if they exist to that provides that richness of data uh and has that longitudinal data that njs La has all right I'm G we're gonna go ahead and proceed then um thank you for that update Miss zembo and uh Miss Taylor you have uh some information for us as well so initial observations um for the science test this year is that for the most part our results were consistent with small increases in grades five and grades 11 we did see a nice bump in 11 so I'm hoping that our initiatives from last year just make sure that students were aware of their the importance doing their best uh when they took the test did uh prove forth there uh again I've mentioned already that some of the issues that we have with really taking this data and really implementing it into our curriculum has to do with the fact that we don't we are not provided evidence St ments or a lot of really usable data that we can use to really Target or pinpoint what we are doing what we need to improve on or even what we are doing well so you don't want to do anything too drastic because you might then hurt something that you're doing well on you really can't uh change that so again focusing on consistency within our buildings and just overall test taking strategies um and again indic indicating that um our now through our initial analysis the length of time that students spent taking the exam once again proved that high higher scores took place so for students who were you know specifically in the 11th grade if they rushed through the test um you know their scores did see a bit of an impact there and this is a pretty long test like each question requires students to analyze multiple forms of data so there might be a data table a written passage a diagram and then students are asked a series of questions on that so they have to scroll click different tabs and and some of the reading passages are quite lengthy um for students to go through so um for a student who may not be as motivated for the test it's not just reading a quick question and answering it does require quite a bit of effort so we have been uh working with students on that um both in their classes during regular instruction and then also some of those motivational discussions as we lead towards the test so our action plan U we're expanding the usage of I EXL so last uh winter we did purchase ISL so teachers in grades 6 through eight began um using ISL uh in the spring we had some PD and they began to start using that but it was really this fall when we had another PD um opportunity and then we started expanding and really targeting it by developing key quizzes um being able to identify certain students and assign specific skills so that they could not only reinforce what they were doing in their grade band but any foundational skills they may have learned in a previous grade level that may be causing an issue in what they're teaching so because we do have a spiraling science curriculum in the middle schools um we're also taking a look at um Expo exposure to njsla question format so this is something we started working on last year we're continuing this year so creating more opportunities for students to analyze data from multiple sources and be able to pull from that data table and that diagram and a related written passage and be able to analyze and and extrapolate the data from that so we've been doing that the teachers are using us them in do Nows they're pulling grabs from The New York Times to use them to get students just to be able to analyze and utilize data in a in a different way um continued in benefit like motivational techniques I mean the teachers really are trying very hard to make sure that students take it seriously and that the endurance required to go through some of these passages is um that the students are prepared for it they're ready for it and that they're motivated when they go in and I do think we saw and benefits there and then I also see here um Miss O'Neal added in an analysis of the fifth grade scores um showing that to improve some consistency between the buildings on the scores and that she's going to be um creating some additional test samples there to ensure that we get more consistency between the buildings which as I mentioned that was the primary focus when I came here was making sure our middle schools were consistent throughout and they are pretty much um with the with we have all of our ESL and majority of IEP students in one building so you do see a little dip there but it is pretty they're pretty consistent there um so so thank you all for for this I just I want to add some uh some of my own personal commentary I mean I think I get it we have to report on this uh publicly and I think there's some value that comes from this which is it gives you like the high level you know 10,000 foot View of what's going on right and we saw some of the takeaways you know grade three you needed certain help and you're able to kind of drill in um which is valuable but keep in mind we're still dealing with kind of the law of averages if you will right and that's the challenge with this kind of data is you may have you know for example that grade three Co cohort that was having a hard time from an Ela perspective perhaps there's one or two teachers that are struggling to teach their students and that's bringing it down right so we're we're still Limited in the action plan at least from from my perspective I would hope that one day you know especially now that we have link and I Exel I think the Holy Grail is really be being able to really figure out what's going on with all of our students and teachers in terms of like which teachers need support um so I would hope and maybe this is what you guys are doing behind the scenes and perhaps you know we could see a sample of that one day because again I would personally I would prefer we kind of through this pretty and kind of looked more at link andl reports because ideally what I would love to see is you know let's look at Travel for example the third grade stable cohort and plot each student as a as a bar gra as a line graph and say hey these you know 25 students are are increasing in terms of meeting or exceeding our expectations right our standards as Ridgewood but then we've got these seven or eight right that are going down or or not increasing in terms of their their development of years right so now I can zero in on those seven students and say hey what's really going on here we don't want to leave anybody behind right so let's really focus on that and then alternatively you can also dissect the data from a teacher perspective right where you can say hey we've got you know how many you know maybe three classes times six schools we've got maybe 18 or so roughly uh third grade teachers 18 fourth grade teachers so let's plot those teach teachers average class performance right as informed by linkit and Exel let's plot those against each other and now we can say hey there's you know three or four teachers three or four third grade ELA teachers or three or four uh fourth gr sorry third grade math teachers or science that are consistently their classes are consistently below the average and so maybe those teachers need additional support or coaching maybe they're newer maybe they need a little bit more handholding or whatever that is and so now we can kind of be more like targeted Precision strikes if you will and to have a bigger Impact versus the average and now we're GNA do PD PD is great I get it but now PD is is for everybody kind of a slower Step Up versus more targeted approach so that to me would be the Holy Grail of kind of having linked it and link sorry link it andl where we can be more a lot more targeted and really bring up the whole District's performance tremendously and again maybe you're all doing this behind the scenes um and maybe it would be worth like a deeper dive in the curriculum committee and then we get like a a summary version right I agree I agree with everything you're saying at the minimum the linkit utilization by year that are we seeing increase in in link utilization um year-over year and the grant uh the tutoring Grant utilization or the summer classes that we run that did they make are they making any difference or not so those are the two places where we are um spending money above and beyond the regular classroom so are they making any difference or not so that we need to know so that way we can continue those programs or not continue those programs but the njsla data that I mean um what you were saying that sounds a little bit like we're verging into um teacher assessments this how how spe specific teachers or classrooms perform on njsla it's not used in terms of teacher as teacher performance like teacher evaluations correct because this is starting to get into that territory and I'd be I'm I'm sensitive and I would be CAU about that yeah that's very kind of you to be so sensitive so so first of all um there is a component to njsla scores that have impacted teacher performance and that's the student growth percentile that students teachers used to get as part of their evaluation but that was confidential data that was provided to us by the state for their evaluation purposes but to your concern about wanting to like so I so I think again both of what you're saying is is is right um this is going to be really my kind of my my takeaway here is this idea of this based approach and like the idea that differentiating between when we look at numbers and aggregate as you were saying an average you know we're seeing them basically that that appear when we look at through this lens like well this must be districtwide one of my challenges to go back would be with to supervisors to say like is this truly districtwide or is this more localized because if you have let's say for example we have just in a hypothetical world we have six teachers teaching a subject four are like Aces and their kids just grow and grow and grow and grow but two just are totally miss the mark every year in aggregate we might look flat we're like oh you well I guess they're keeping up right when in reality if we could get those other two to perform even close to what those other four were our whole impact would jump and I think that's the point that you're question and but but but to Mrs quack's point uh or Miss qua point we have to be mindful of the fact that um while we dig into that data there's certain sensitivities That Could That Could that could make people uncomfortable so that's why I was saying before about there's the Public Presentation of it but then there's just out of respect for confidentiality for the individuals who are responsible for this data that we would do that more in a closed session where we'd start digging into Hey listen looks like we've got a cluster of teachers here and there who could maybe benefit from some professional development you know for whatever reason that this one school at this one grade we're just seeing this drop off and it's particularly severe so let's go to those teachers right now and break out the DAT and be like hey what do you think is going on here you know but do that confidentially so that way we're not we're not we're not calling anybody yeah 100% I don't I don't need to see that and we shouldn't publicly see any student specific information or staff specific information but I'm just saying those tools hopefully will should be helping you all uh to kind of Target right student development and then teacher development right those are going to be the two areas right because we the other piece is a student piece we don't wna you know if we're leaving kids Behind for many years where they're struggling then we're not doing our job right and that's that's what this is all about that's right so if I can use that may I use that to segue and then if anyone has any questions or comments please feel free these are my overarching takeaways and Next Step so first of all again this is just in aggregate it seems like our overall proficiency rates across acoss Ela are fairly consistent across grade levels however math scores appear to decline year to year we see both these Trends across the state however the second takeaway is we have variability in our growth within cohorts we have variability between schools and we have variability between subgroups so we've got to figure that out and that's exactly your point we have to Target like where to what extent is it systemic right if it's systemic and you know uh and everybody's teaching the same thing and we're seeing it evenly across schools we see this we see something going down or going up well that's something we're either doing right or we're doing wrong uh from a districtwide perspective but if we dig into it and we see again like I said before we happen to have six elementary schools so four schools are seeing really solid positive Trends and two are seeing a very negative Trend again it's gonna it's going to look like a wash for us here or a slight positive slight negative Trend when in reality by telling them all to do something different isn't the right thing to do right we got to get to those two that really need that support and get them pointed in the right direction the other four are doing great again and there are some trends like that interestingly it's not it's not uh it doesn't appear from the data and I know that Dr Walsh you looked at some of this data too it doesn't appear that is necessarily like well this one School uh was really struggling in ela it's more nuanced than that right I think in when you drilled down uh Dr walon you see it was you you did see a bit of a trend though with vocabulary and informational text is that right can you use the microphone do you mind so that would be so that was kind of a systemic issue but then we also saw local places where there was like individual anomalies yeah I looked at the school on a school level uh for for the three subscores for informational literary and vocabulary and it depended on the grade level and the subscore uh so uh so there was not like a trend that you could notice you know it it it was like I said the variables change depending on the grade level and the subscore okay great and so that's that Target based approach so in terms of next steps first of all I don't want to lose sight of strategic planning because really like that's that's that's everything should be revolving around strategic planning um and we have really good movement in that space um and by the way I just I got a first look at some of the data from the Adams's in that in in in in in what they're going to be presenting to the community and to our to our groups and there is a very strong focus in it and there's actually a a pretty high strong perception in the community that like our greatest opportunity is to really tighten up the consistency around our curricular areas of focus so that way we can actually you know then and that just speaks to this importance of this work so boiling it down there is so I'm I'm way oversimplifying here the Nuance of actually getting these things done but boiling this down the very first thing that we need to focus on is having having multiple measures and right now if we don't we're not really proactive in articulate about having multiple measures then njsla is all we got and the state uh doesn't give us the full inside scoop on what's going on with their scoring and their Trends so we should still look at it it's still important we should do our analysis of them we should do comparative analysis to other districts that we we that we feel like we should be comparing ourselves to but we have to have uh local benchmarks now with linkit at the elementary level we have benchmarking but but we can do more to actually be reporting out on it and reports like this and we will be doing more to help certainly dig a Little Deeper um but we also need to have benchmarks through the secondary level too and links not necessarily um the link benchmarks um we've only really introduced them recently into middle school and we're considering high school as well but at the even at the high school levels whether we're talking about even midterms and finals um there are other measur measures that we can use and we have to make sure that we use them we also have to make sure that we have common assessments um throughout again that's more of a secondary level issue but it's definitely helps with Elementary as well so that we can track and monitor student progress across all of our subject areas as we care about them and with intentional design we can ensure that the that that common themes in terms of critical thinking and Analysis um can be we can have we can ensure that across multiple subject areas that our common assessments reflect those like the core learnings of those areas in that core critical thinking um so making sure that that's where and your question Mr Donnie about uh linkit and like to what extent is link it working um it is a pretty significant expense but it is also a main production a productive capacity expense so um I've worked with linkit before I've also worked with other Data Systems I think I but I do think that we as a team need to look at how we're using link it and is and is that the right tool to drive Improvement for student learning it certainly is a benchmarking tool it certainly is a data warehousing tool um but as but until we see more universally consistent outputs we should be asking ourselves is this the right tool um but most importantly so that kind of but that but that's but that right now is our tool to accomplish the first goal there uh the first Next Step there the second next step is ensuring that we have appropriate alignment K12 we see this drop off in fifth and sixth grade there's a I would really like we're going to dig into that for sure to try to get a sense of is this a curricular issue is it a matter of teacher expectation is it a matter of how we assess at that grade um because the reality is that we see we do see that drop off in student performance so we have to make sure that all of our curriculum and all of our resources and all of our assessments actually align K12 because that's the planned pathway that we're trying to send all our kids down but at the same time that we have like I think of the analogy of like we have like a we have like this huge body of people right and we have to figure out where we all are and we have to figure out where we want to all go but getting a huge mass of people to travel down the same path together is a lot of work right and would stand a reason that as you try to kind of guide thousands of students in one in a direction you're going to have outliers you're GNA you're GNA you're going to have some peel off and go in different directions we have to have systems for consistently bringing them back so it's good to have a plan and a path forward that's really well articulated path that's paved and really laid out for everybody but we also have to accept the fact that we could do everything right on our side of the equation and kids have real lives that are unpredictable and variable and we're going to have kids that find their way that either come to district with holes or that had disruptions they learning along the way and they didn't learn what they were supposed to learn had learning challenges whatever difficulties they had we have to have systems to steer them back and this is what I keep talking about with quality assurance systems such as every school has an inrs team by by code they have to have an inrs team that means intervention and referral services that's a very labor intensive human team-based human-based individual student consultation practice which is important but also very inefficient mtss or multi-tiered system of support systems or response to intervention systems are systems that are based off of a tiered system of supports that we know that students are going to commonly need and it's really simply it's basically supports in the classroom a little a little bit of extra support outside of the classroom or very intensive support outside of the classroom but the idea is that we're continuously pointing kids down the same path down the general path we want them to go via our curriculum and our resources and then planning for those moments when kids don't actually meet those expectations so that we can give a little more to those students to be successful so that so that this is what we've been talking about this isn't new but it's about building out these systems to recognize that we have to look underneath the hood these these these data visualizations are just the top level view they're not enough we've got to get under the hood we've got to figure out where those targeted areas are that we need to improve on we need to mobilize all we need to look at that data not just through njsla lens but through benchmarking lens and we need to bring that data then to our teachers and especially to those teachers who might be the ones who's who who's having trouble getting those results they need to partner in the conversation around how can we do better with these kids they're the ones who do the work every day but if we partner with them and we Empower them to look at this data and to come up with strategies and plans and to partner with their principles to figure out how to adjust schedules to be creative to get that extra support for kids then we'll be we we we will have the the potentiality to actually meet the needs of all the kids but I but as as simple as that sounds this is a very this is a very intensive process that we need all our team our team of professionals for uh to engage our teachers because if we designed if we could design a perfect system in this room it wouldn't matter because if they are not a part of the system or feel a part of the system or are a part of the designing of the system and by them I mean the actual faculty members who do that work then we're not actually going to impact their practice so uh so that so that in my mind this just the data I'm seeing here really aligns with what we're seeing we're going to unpack this further we'll bring it back to the curriculum committee um and then we'll summ for the rest of the board but we want to make sure that we all feel confident and that our curriculum community members feel confident that we are finding those places that we have to Target to to to elevate so that way across the board we can really Shore up what is already a which is already a system that produces a lot of good results but we want to be even better 100% agree thank thank you Dr Shores I'd like for us to Target some sort of uh date we don't have to set it now but when we do come back and kind of look at the that deeper LEL view again without confidential specific information on teachers or students maybe it's a sample of like here's yeah well we're we're going to Fast Track this pretty hard because it's still pretty early in the year right so some so some of these Trends we were already on top of and some have already been addressed somewhat you know I think I think across the board we generally everyone's a little bit more aware of what we're trying to accomplish here but um but but uh this is something that we've been talking about from last week into this week and it's something that I'm certainly going to be reaching out to the we'll be pulling the supervisors together we're just talking about this today to really get into okay what are the next how do we what do these next steps actually look like in terms of the actual like really and actually kind of making like a checklist of like these are the things that we need to do do we check this by teacher do we check this by school do we drill down to the actual discreet learning Strand and then what steps are we take and actually engage those teachers um and the principles as well to ensure that we're having a uh an immediate response for the current year an immediate adjustment for the current year and then of course and an even more systemic and response for next year but I want to be clear there's already great evidence of this all happening all throughout the district it's happening organically we want to ensure that it's happening systematically is njsla um part of our qac process in terms of reporting Administration and all that it is yes okay thank you so it's there's been a lot of works from when we the LA the few you know presentations I've seen so thank you so much especially on signs you're right the 11th grade I I can see the results so congratulations to all of you and thank you and just the last quick question as well is is maybe Miss Murphy and her new role as well is how do we measure the high school performance I mean maybe the AP classes are a little bit easier because there's a standard at the end that they're teaching to uh but how about regular CP classes honorous classes right are these students learning are they being challenged are they are we missing students and leaving some behind that are just struggling right how do we measure all of that I don't know so something for us to think about you you brought up an interesting point about uh with the high school that to the other limitation of the njsla data is that it it's it's limited in range K to2 is like a black box right and anything post those High School level initial courses is unclear as well so yeah we do need to have that clarified and I think purely from an acade there's lots of ways to measure the impact of a high school and I think we need to I think this part of what we've been at challenging the administration to think about is you know what what matters to you you because we measure what matters and there's a lot that we can focus on especially with respect to attendance and tardiness and that's something the high school has been focused on but the academic gains still matter right academic progress still matters when we have such a large high school is so many teachers teaching multiple versions of the same course having common assessments across those courses are really important because they can help us where the we don't have njsla data to provide this but if we can compare students performances on say you know High School I don't know like a high school high school uh US History course right that that all students have to take it would be great to be able to say say that with a common assessment which doesn't have to be by the way as as crazy as like a midterm or a final exam but a common assessment that focuses on what the key learnings are of that of that that content area across all those sections could give the teachers all feedback as to how successful their individual methods are in ensuring Equitable outcomes for across all sections so I think we already your stopwatch probably stopped working it probably we are out of the range whatever was the range of that stopwatch but um I have one uh last uh input which I originally wanted to I have a request um my request was originally for Dr Murphy Dr Schwarz and Miss Murphy for the curricul the HR agenda item but since Miss onmo is already here and it's it's a combin request to all four of you um on the agenda today we have a resignation or retirement resignation for the purpose of retirement and I'm requesting um that we take that very very seriously to find um an alternative or our plan because it's um 8 weeks 40 days out of those 40 days 10 days is holiday 3 days in this week uh Thanksgiving holiday Christmas break so we only have like limited working days and I don't know how many vacations um our teacher already has that he they might want to take during that time so if we don't find the replacement during that time if they are going to take extended Vacations or holiday before retirement or right after the retirement because the middle of the Year there are a lot of students who are going to be impacted they are very emotionally attached to the teacher and um these students will go into the pre-calculus and uh calculus track where we have a lot of students that drop out from calculus to pre-calculus to Calculus AB and they already have hard time and if they have if they are high achieving students and if they are having difficult time in mathematics it will impact all of their subjects because they would not be able to take that okay why is my math score is not good and and if one score is not good it it packs the other so I think we we need to look at that problem and we need to address it right away instead of waiting until January and then trying to find something so that's my request that we have a retirement I know you are already working on that probably but I just want to highlight the importance of this specific subject the specific track because I've have seen students who we have dropped from pre-calculus to calculus so there is a struggle already in in in that track so we need to fix that in 8 grade soon or identify a replacement or our backup plan what after the retirement just just to provide a brief update um so we we have already posted for the position Mr M was very proactive in making sure as soon as we had information we started a search I have to say that over the past uh two years we actually have had multiple midyear math retirements and have been quite fortunate in finding um not one but two outstanding teachers um that that we added to our cohort of Math teachers that have been great additions to the faculty so we're hoping that we have a similar outcome this year and because it's a January one start it's not like it's the middle of February or whatnot so it is a clean break in the air that being said we're already strategizing about what we will do if we do not find a strong replacement thank you that was that was the last slide so if you're all good we can stop the stopwatch we can thank our supervisors for joining us thank you all very much thank you I know that was a lot oh that's that's the work we're here to do did you have a I did just brief um so just want to uh I want to thank um I want to thank Miss qua who joined us down in New Jersey Schoolboard Association right represent the Board of Education uh we had the we had a nice representation nice representation from the administrative team down there um it was really nice to have everybody down there a lot of professional networking um got to check out a bunch of vendors um I think I think we uh we're gonna to I think we're gonna to preserve our F to preserve the friendship I think Dr Murphy and I are going to call it a tie is that what we said we're going to call it a tie we each gave three presentations and uh that's what call I'll go with that if you did a if we did a raw count of participants um I might have I might have won except for the fact that uh my best attended event I was one of a panel of five which was not my uh which which I was not the originator of the panel so I'm gonna I'm gonna concede Tai if you're comfortable with that Dr Schwarz if we have to measure the interest in today's presentation there were about 20 people now it's four may my legacy be the board members mocking [Laughter] you but Dr jores you were double booked see you were that he was so popular he was double booked at New Jersey School Board Association thank you it was very it was it was a nice no it was a really nice time I had a chance to talk about I was on a I was on a panel uh that was uh spearheaded by um David aderhold uh who is the um uh who's a superintend West Winds or Plainsboro and very involved around the state he actually chaired the uh evaluation task force committee and uh and actually wrote the wrote the cover letter if you haven't read that report they did a really nice job uh he's a really great professional he's one and a ridard graduate and a rwood graduate mom still lives here right by halls I know his family is still here oh that's that's there you go just another another n Ridgewood um but uh but he put together this nice panel and it was mostly districts that were losing funds via the S2 recalculation of the state funding formula and uh and I he actually asked me to attend to represent um a district that actually uh actually really when you consider my prior districts two districts that had seen increases and kind of what the differences and Dynamics are for us who've been enjoying these increases who are now facing our own fiscal cliff so it was a productive conversation um I also we also talked about uh talked with one of my former colleagues Dr Frank santur superintendent Roxbury who had had been my assistant superintendent in Madison we gave a talk on student surveys um we used uh prior data because we don't have longitudinal data here from the surveys but we're going to build up a similar data set so we can see our changes over time and then of course uh uh uh Mr Dan Ross who is my assistant superintendent Madison also who's now superintendent Dell and he and I presented on uh school rankings and ratings um and uh which received a lot of pretty good amount of uh of attention and inquiry and um and I thank again miss qua for sharing that presentation out among some her constituents within the aapi community and you had your own session with the aapi community right for coming um we've uh it's our third annual Meetup we have grown in size and grown in terms of participation so thank you for Dr Fenwick Miss Murphy Mr Matthews Dr Schwarz I think you were having your own session so we can but be next year but um it was a it was wonderful to see everybody um so thank you again for coming and uh supporting and to the extent that it that it works for folks I know everyone's got busy lives but to the extent that you could probably possibly put on your calendar um it is just a really positive event and um it's great and it's always nice to talk to people from other districts too um and and it's a good opportunity you know we we deal a lot with vendors it's a good opportunity to get to know different vendors and kind of have an idea of some you know ways that we can you know maybe maybe strengthen ourselves by by uh finding Partnerships that really align well for us I just want to remind everybody that tomorrow is election day schools are closed we are using an emergency day and consistent with an emergency day y see a fist in the air there Harrison hope you enjoy that day um yeah right I was gonna say You're really hanging out you're really committed to the scores here oh he's he's can we separate the two of them please so uh uh but it is an emergency day so I just want to remind everybody that there will be no school events we do have some we do have a a few Min things happening in the district um and we have we certainly have our schools are polling sites um we do have some security folks on on site as well uh to make sure that people aren't entering the buildings inappropriately like that people are staying where they're supposed to stay um but uh but hope everybody does enjoy that day off then we of course have the nja convention for the rest of the week those are also days that the districts are the district is fully closed so we will be back in school for Wednesday but it is a rather regular and long break um but I hope that do people do use the time I mean anytime that we're not scheduled for school is it time to try to refresh and uh come back uh charged up and ready to go because we're going to have a lot of school year ahead of us when we get back um and I think I've said enough thank okay we'll go to consent items regular and routine attendance at conferences I move attendance at conferences I have a second second any have any questions we could go ahead and take a roll call that I made a motion seconded by uh Mr Kelly okay Mr Donnie yes Mr qu yes Kelly yes Mr M yes brogen yes um move uh Administration second this is with the uh second reading and adoption of the um policies that we have um been talking about and this will now solidify the um public comment where we will now adjust what's written on our front page of our agenda and um ask people as I have been doing to only state their name and municipality by m Brogan second by Mr MCM Mr D yes qu yes m m yes M yes BR yes pass I move curriculum and instruction C second motion by Mr Donnie second by m m Mr Donnie yes sad yes yes Mr mm yes M Broan yes going into Human Resources I move human resources and and um as we've already discussed we are accepting the retirement uh for um Mr litvac wish him well second motion by m Brogan second by Mr mmud Mr Donnie yes M Spock yes m m Mr LMO yes M Broan yes pass just scrolling down there okay uh now we're at Finance I move Finance someone like second it second motion by m Brogan second by Mr MCM Mr Donnie yes M quack yes m m yes Mr MCM yes M bro yes and I'll just read into um the record the acceptance of restrict restricted donations women's soccer booster Association $1,216 to be used to pay for busing for the team building trip to recor University Deca $81.99 and gift in kind of trash bins for the maroon Mart and Richwood High School home and School Association which was um $466 that we had approved uh for landscaping and planting at the high school but now it will be used to create a mural with uh an artist and students um is that what was done or is that going to be in the Campus Center yeah it was completed today that's the it so that's what you were talking about great thank you for that and I just want to mention um the grant um is the expanding access to Computer Science High School courses competitive Grant funds for $4,997 so that's another Grant um that we have been successful in in getting okay approval of bills um uh hu oh I think we're going to do the resolutions and motions not in oh I'm sorry sorry yes thanks resolution and motion not included in consent agenda and this is the um opening and rejection of a bid for transportation right um we'll go out to U seek uh other bids because this quite high as I understand it that's right Mr Matthews do you want to give context yeah so uh bid went out for transportation for athletics came back over budget so you're allowed to go back out for quote keep a a company under a quote up until you reach the bid threshold of $44,000 once you approach that got to go back out again so we're actually going back out again because we're going to be nearing the the bidal $44,000 so we're we're going back out again so we're GNA um move I so move uh a um to uh reject the bid second second by Miss quack yes Mo made by Miss Brogan second by Miss quack Miss Tani yes Miss quar yes m m yes Mr Mahmud yes M bro yes now we can go to the uh thank you for that uh hu um approval bills uh r the bills and um I had some few questions I had a little bit of a problem with the software getting the data and thank you Mr Matthews for providing me the backup um so I move uh the bills for this period I'll second a motion by Miss quack second by Miss Brogan Mr Donnie yes Miss quack yes m m yes Mr mmud yes M Brogan yes motion pass board member announcements I had a few oh I just are go ahead oh I just wanted to um recognize that our setup is a little bit differently and I wanted to welcome Dr Fenwick and Miss Murphy in their roles as assistant superintendents so uh it was really nice to see it uh everybody together so welcome long meeting I just um had the opportunity to um go to the uh Sports Hall of Fame dinner and if you haven't been to the high school um recently you might see this is the new window over the uh gym entrances on Herman so it looks really great much better than the paper one uh but it's very cool so just and that's a a thank you to the um Sports Hall of Fame who raised the money to uh be able to do that um Mary and I uh were able to uh go to the um sensory friendly dinner at um steel wheel um well attended uh and um some of our uh the fire um we had a person from the fire department come and and give out I think crayons and and coloring coloring books or or sheets um so it was uh well attended and everyone seemed to have a good time um the lighthouse project is moving forward and this month in November um they are um uh asking people to practice gratitude and asking organizations to practice gratitude and I noticed that in we are Maroons you've highlighted that um initiative as well so thank you for that um uh steps open house very nicely done Dr uh Fenwick and um I think it's when I was there it was pretty well attended so I um between 10 and 12 I don't know if if they continue that way but um it was great to um see the students in action and also um again see the space and and um some of the renovation that has happened so I know that um that building is being sold so what will be the future if that's the uh space we continue with but um that is all in the future but um that was my announcements a board committee reports we've been active um I don't know who would like to um would you like to say anything about um Finance or have we covered it so mamad and I we met um with Mr Matthews and Dr Schwarz um Aaron and um and Naomi from the business office and some of what we discussed you see on the agenda so you see the CMP U the maintenance report um we went into in detail which shows by building all the maintenance activities that need to be done what was projected actual um and so we reviewed it in detail we approved it thank you on today's agenda um other items that were discussed is again on the agenda the the bid for the transportation for um athletic events that they came in up above uh and so by rejecting it this allows Mr Matthews and his team to now go out and um and get uh following the the purchasing process to um select individual quotes and to negotiate directly um other items that we discussed uh are still um to be resolved which is the insurance coverage for the fields that was due to to a um misclassification not for the um claims uh it was for the misclassification that is why our deductible went from 50,000 to 500,000 because we're um that one field is in the class A Zone um and so those are ongoing discussions that we're having with different Insurance Brokers to try and resolve uh and one of the questions that Mr Mahmud had that we're trying to also figure out is what would be the impact the cost benefit analysis of not having Insurance um given the high deductible so uh these are things these are activities that we hope to um close at by the next Finance meeting hopefully um get some movement there and one of the last things we talked about was the budget process in the calendar um the Auditors already on site working on the um fiscal year end 2023 to 2024 books to try uh to finish the audit in time to present uh in next year um uh to give you the audited report on that uh while that is going on the business office is uh uh finalizing and we'll be sharing with the administration and with us here on what the um budget calendar looks like in terms of when the um preliminary budgets from different buildings are due when we get to see it and so that will be shared out shortly um because uh we will have to have a based on the county deadlines what we need to submit we will have to do the preliminary budget by a certain time and then we'll have to have the public um uh discussion uh and then have the final uh budget for 2526 uh for next year um and uh next year is the qac year which is happens with every other every three yeah every three years so next year is it we're already preparing for we the administration not we the administration is preparing for that uh and it will be a a quite a detailed and exhaustive process I'm sure we'll do very well and um that's it uh I can cover Communications committee uh pretty straightforward a lot a lot of time was on the the football game and our response to the community which we discussed today um additional guidelines around election day to go out to staff U testing of the school alert system website updates uh and then streamlining our social Media communication as well so for the communications committee I had U one request I already sent Dr sh and you reive that um we may want to revisit uh whether we need thought exchange or not because the amount of money we are spending versus how we we utilizing if we just need one or two surveys a year I don't think we need that much money for that I think it's a working progress Dr SCH yeah but I think the the response I received was that maybe we can get rid of Survey Monkey but that's one/ tenth of the cost so it's it's not the answer is not to get rid of Survey Monkey and move one survey there but if we are not utilizing um thought exchange as we intended to then we need to start utilizing it or get it out yeah Miss corus and I spoke about this today as well um I just to be very clear um I've used thought exchange pretty heavily in a prior District we've used it a bit here um we have a lot of communication systems here that seem to be making a big difference for us we paid for the year um and there's other uses for Thought exchange that are internal as well like it's actually has benefits for being used in team so some folks are doing that we also have some some beta items that Miss cus wants to test so we're going to continue to use it through this fall we'll proba at least a survey or two but uh one thing that we will want to talk about is the extent to which it is a very Hefty price tag um and it doesn't we want to make sure that what we're spending on it warrants uh or we using it for warrants the price so right or or we go back to them and tell them that for our district if it was priced for the size of District we don't have that much utilization and maybe they renegotiate price based on how much we are using it yeah and and I've actually that's actually something that I feel pretty strongly about with their pricing model that I feel like is really just from their company knowing their model well it's just it's a Miss for them they're going to they they they really need to be adjusting especially as it's but finances get tighter for districts I mean it's not it's not the kind of tool that you can use if we used it every month people would get tired of it so uh so it seems Seems like you you should be able to they should have some sort of a plan where you get like a certain number of exchanges for a certain price that seems to make more sense to me so that's something than I would certainly bring to the company before we just cut ties because I do think an occasional CommunityWide exchange can be real benef really beneficial but um now we're looking at it critically yeah thank you because I I'm just saying for when it comes for Renewal next year I may not be able to support it if you're not using it so there could be a model for them so a lot of times with these companies the cloud Rider companies right they're in a dilemma because they don't want to Discount something and then where it hits the street that they' discounted and now other school districts are expecting the same right so it'll just be a massive hit to their their revenue if they discount so sometimes they don't that's why they don't want to do that the workaround for them could be like a what's called an rul a restricted use license where they contractually say hey we're going to give you a discount but with the understanding that you're only because you're only using it for these many use cases or times or whatever and that's how they're sometimes able they could be able to warrant discount so that could be a suggestion to make for them is like Hey we're not using it as you as you thought we would be we're using it this much instead of this much they'll give us this scout and that's how they can protect themselves from other discs that's a cloud software salesman speaking yeah did you also um feel that the data analysis was was better yeah they they fixed that piece that I didn't like yeah no they fixed it um and it but and to be clear I I think that that's I think that's a great suggestion thank you for that that's along the lines I was thinking but I wasn't familiar with that term so your industry expertise is helping here but I would say I just know firsthand that that that because they pric themselves out of many accounts um there's lots of people who'd like to try it or just they just walk at the at the price and they've Lo they lose accounts over the amount too so I think they actually they could increase their market share if they went to a different smarter pricing model um um policies so um well I know we talked a little we yeah we talked earlier about that was a that was a fairly you know significant discussion um and we will revisit it I'm sure um but uh the other thing is uh you'll see on it's up for discussion is just uh two recommended policies from Strauss smme uh the one that I wanted to mention just specifically was um on attendance because now uh New Jersey has um made a law that um there can be one excused absence per year for a Civic event and so now we have a new policy that specifies that defines what a Civic event is and also provides that if you want to take your child out of school for a designated cic event you have to give five days written notice to the district so I think that's just important for people to know that's up for discussion today um in addition to that we just solidified our policy that if if a student is absent for absent for any reason for five days or more then the district may require uh a written explanation or doctor's note as to why so that's just a change in our policy that's going to be coming up um the other thing that we just discussed and I think we'll discuss again when we meet in December is um how you know kind of looking at our policies in um conjunction with the business office and Mr Matthews um is how to make it easier for our volunteers to actually volunteer there's been a lot of frustration I know it's something that has been kind of bubbling around and we're ready to tackle it um so that's something that we can look forward to in December um we certainly heard about it yeah yeah I I hear it a lot I think we all do so it's time and so we will address that um and then just on cpeg I just wanted to mention that we have another sensory friendly dinner on on Wednesday night at it's called now lay Pancake House it used to be um the country Pancake House and but um I'm sure that there's openings for that that's Wednesday the 6 between 500 and 8:00 pm so if anyone's interested in attending uh we would look forward to seeing you there and I probably should have done this in announcements but a shout out I know we've mentioned it before but um Ridgewood did win the Innovations and special education Awards Dr Fenwick for the unified electives and the Unified sports program and it is published in school leader magazine and I have it here so there's a really nice write up on us so congratulations again it's such a great program that's everything great than oh actually on the policy I think there was a question too about this so I just want to report out that um the field Turf safety guidelines um Mr kild is looking at it and that it will be in terms of incorporating into the student handbook or the coach I think it's the coaches right that's what we're think talking about that's going to be yeah he was going to write some he was going to I thought he was waiting for more direction from the attorney and then he was going to write something up and we were going to address so it'll be but I think it was more advanced than I think the attorney has already provided yeah like that's what I don't understand what are we waiting for attorney has provided two rounds of guidance what I don't think there was anything they not part of the initial rounds but I believe that by the next policy meeting that would be we would be looking at that specific language from um to be incorporated and it would be at at the agenda soon that that was my my understanding yeah we are we have a followup meeting scheduled to finalize language great is that um handbook part of a policy no so why are we waiting for the policy committee and why don't we just get it done oh you're right we don't vote on that yeah I don't entire board has already voted for no I I I just need I need to have a followup there's some draft language that was submitted I have a few follow-up questions to just make sure that it's in line with what the what the attorney shared and then we'll finalize it we didn't vote one way or the other I think unless I've missed a meeting which I don't think I have um no no just let me finish speaking then you can answer um I thought that um there was we were going to get more information and language was going to be put in front of us um I'm not aare Ware of that having happened I don't think there's been a decision one way or the other because you can't agree to put language into something if you don't know what that language is but we don't vote on the student handbook do we it's not the student handbook it had to do with the um it it it had to be incorporated in um the part that I don't remember the number of the policy so I apologize but the policy that addresses like field safety like concussions and things like that that was something that was squarely before the policy committee oh no I want I wanted to add that but the discussion was that it was I thought the way we left it was um I think one of the questions was could um in terms of field safety be uh like a permission like you know for concussion protocols or um awareness when you first register your child for any sport you have to talk about all these uh safety um parameters and including concussion and your awareness and what happens when you have uh impact and all that and I thought the way it had evolved was that um it was rather than having a specific uh par permission slip uh because we don't have an alternative because what if the parent says no I don't want my so instead it was going to be um uh safety in terms of and these are are guidelines yeah good prac to do good practices uh that we already have in place for other things for example if the turf is like we did in graduation over 125 degrees or whatever it is you don't play so there are certain things like that if you get a if you get a cut and uh you have um rubber tire crumbs in the cut you have to wash it there were certain certain parameters like that that were going to be incorporated we don't vote on that that just go into my fundamental question there hu is the originally there was this was discussed at the policy committee policy committee uh did not get to an agreement or whatever the process was there we invited the attorney in at our executive session the attorney provided guidelines right we put we all provided our opinion on that and I requested that to be part of the minutes now why what are we waiting for again for policy committee it's not one of the policies so why does this need to go to back to policy committee for December 6 we're just delaying it for no it's not a matter of delaying it's a matter of understanding what is going to be put into why does policy committee need to look at it again the whole board has a right to look at that part of our oversight no that's administrative this is we don't actually go down deep into a student handbook and go stud handbook stally agreed that the community the members of the community provide us a document we looked at that document we forwarded the document to the attorney the attorney gave us an advice the board agreed to act on the attorney advice and requested the administration to take an action the board did its job now what are we waiting my main question is what what is Jan December 6th and policy committees involved yeah so so what I remember is that this was going to be in the the handbook that yeah right so we don't vote on the handook so I think let's just give Dr schwar some time to work on it and let's wait till we can see what it is I don't know if this I don't believe it was just something that was just in other words I wasn't clear on what the ultimate language and things are going to be but we don't determine that don't regardless of whether we determine it I do think I have a right to administrative that's that's the I'm not allowed to know what that is is that what you're telling me I it's administrative so you're telling me that I can't have that information because I well that's what I'm saying and I don't think it was clear clear when and how that information was going to have it but you don't overrule the admin I'm asking over I'm asking for the information and I have not had it but whether you have it or not you certainly have the right to have it or whether you have it or not this process whether you you not having it should not delay the administrative process way the whole board but I'm saying for me I am not going to go so deep into the administrative weeds we've already we've already determined a path I don't want to be the impediment of the RO block right I'm not looking to be an impediment either but I am looking to make sure that we all make Intelligent Decisions that are in light of what the attorney advice was there were a lot of this is how I remember it and if I'm wrong I'm wrong and then Dr Schwarz will tell me that okay or the attorney will tell me that think it help if we have a minutes of the meeting can iish speak last meeting can iish speaking s yeah if you before you speak I would like just finish if you can complete the answer when you're providing that answer if you can also add why does this need to go back to policy committee that's what I'm TR that's not what I'm saying what I'm saying is that there were open issues regarding what the legal advice was and I understood that there was more discussion to be had or at least information to be provided as to what ultimately was going to happen now if that's incorrect correct me Dr Schwarz I'm not trying to put you in the middle of what's clearly become an argument but if that's incorrect then correct me and I'll stand corrected but I thought that there was more information does it have to be a policy no maybe it has to be an executive session but if it's already had an executive session okay let's and it was an open issue I thought we had Clos so maybe I thought I I understood it to be closed and I didn't and that's what I'm asking that's all oh okay do we have the minutes for that yeah I think the minutes from the last meeting would clarify this yeah I have no problem being told I'm Wrong Am I Wrong that's my understanding so we're gonna get it from Just okay so okay so we're gonna get ahead so so as I recall from our conversations with the attorney our executive session my conversation with the attorney and where we left it last was that the attorney's recommendation was that we develop language with a physician interpreting the guidance that we were given to be reasonable for a school cont context and we gave us some some B some basic language but again there was like you there's some revision to that so I can see where it would get confusing to but the goal is to put it in this the athletic handbook and the student handbook to be clear there's everybody's right to some extent here that is an administrative document right but that said from my perspective given that this has become a matter of board concern I wouldn't add that to the student handbook without giving the board some sort of a preview of that language in advance fair enough I wouldn't wait for the for the policy committee I have the meet I I asked miss papa Michael today specifically because I did review the language that was put forth and it was not quite exactly consistent with where I thought we were going so I need to have a final conversation with them I feel very clear about what we're producing and where it's going but because this has become such a topic of concern and discussion with among the board just as a general practice even though it's an administrative topic as a courtesy I would usually float it to you all that can be in like a an email of just hey this is what we came to and if anyone has any specific concerns please feel free to reach out to me I think this is a pretty practical uh I don't think we're going to end up with too much controversy with this I think we've we've talked this issue thoroughly through we've felt we've consulted well on it um if there if for some reason it's it's it's there's it's causing dissent or it's causing strife I would rather than kick it to a committee so there could be some discussion about it I don't anticipate it going that route so so so so my focus would be yes it is an administrative topic yes the hook and all that is Administrative but I would float it to all of you before I went and published it I think Dr schw the the cause for the confusion is the update that we received today specifically mentions that this is currently awaiting December 6 policy committee meeting yeah I think that I think that was a miscommunication okay thank you yeah because nothing should really I mean to this is really driven by student safety athletic safety safety of the coaches so I I I'm in favor of just trying to make sure that we really prioritize that and really make sure that we we do best practices as informed by yep and and I apologize if there was a if there was I apologize if within the team and as we distributed that that that was what the impression was I don't I don't believe it's necessary to wait that long okay okay on facilities um s would you like to uh we had our um architect and engineering firm um at the committee meeting we are still um waiting for some more um information from them on um our uh options for the hbac at uh Glenn and ridge but we are narrowing it down um and probably um soon we'll be making that that decision um you already talked about the flood insurance um so some of the some of the things that were discussed at Finance were repeated so the um maintenance uh plan uh was uh LED testing for the steps facility for uh November 10th um Mr Smith is working with a high school science teacher and we're um we're looking at at least putting a rain Barrow at one of our schools I think it's going to probably pause to test it out to see how that works uh this winter and then evaluate um expansion in the spring um and that's under um I think that's moving ahead right now as far as I know um and um and we're just and we're just beginning to talk about the um uh going out for an RFP for our custodial and maintenance um and uh Fields uh so that's still work in progress um so uh good meeting uh and there's lots of work to continue one question just um when I was looking at the meeting minutes I I saw that there were like maybe six options for the HVAC at Ridge and Glenn and then I saw a notation in the minutes that they were just going to do a cost analysis of options A and B so those those are the two we're looking at that yes correct yes okay that's I that I just wanted to clarify that so the remainder of it is is not not to look at right now thank you um on on that cost option I just I just want to put my thoughts on on record um I've expressed that at the um facilities committee also but I uh I have a feeling so far working with the team that um not everybody is comfortable with the moving forward with new technologies or at least separating um [Music] the ventilation part from Heating and Cooling part and I think that is a new perspective that that we really need to look at that ventilation is a code requirement ventilation is a health requirement fresh air is a health requirement we've expressed that we've faced that during covid we should not be looking at 30 40 year old technology which ties ventilation and heating and cooling together in the single equipment and which gives ability for staff members or a student to turn it off or on depending on noise or Comfort level so Comfort the heating and cooling component should be treated as comfort there is there are a lot of commoditization in that market that is uh we can just replace those things in a few classrooms using our maintenance budget we don't even have to spend lots of money on on those systems we don't have to go central air central systems for those anymore but ventilation is something that we should be looking at as a requirement that should be separate from Heating and Cooling and nobody should be able to turn off or on ventilation part it should not be noisy and it should be always on if there's an occupancy in a room that's the direction I think we should go to but I feel that from our professionals there is from their comfort level from their experience um in working in it they are somehow still going back to the technologies that existed for last 40 50 years and they are not very comfortable in looking at new technology that that's my feeling so far from working with them in last four months that's why it just keeps going back and in Loops we go in a meeting assuming that we'll get some new information and we don't get that A and B are those so option A is uh separation of ventilation from Heating and Cooling and option b is uh what we have in high school and all of those okay great thank you okay um discussion items we have the policies I think that's an interesting policy the one where students will have have one day civity um um I'm sorry my my microphone wasn't on um so I was just on the regulation 5200 um attendance where we new by legislature uh by law has enacted to uh permit New Jersey public school students from grades 6 through 12 one state excused absence each school year to attend a Civic event so um I think that's very interesting I wonder how do you if if um I believe that it's probably a mandate because it's legislative um that we would need to have that um what what's the practice of getting that information out so families know is this going to be um something goes out in September or if this um goes and is approved by the board in you know two more times does it then go out I just wondered the announcing of it you don't have to answer if you no I'll Circle back yeah just wondered what the process was did anybody have any questions on any of those I I just wanted to um bring up um when we had Matt Lee here in July um reporting on the self-evaluation um he suggested that some board or he said that some boards have moved from doing their evaluation in the spring to doing their evaluations in November so that it it informs your um reorganization and and maybe your yearly goals um I talked to school boards um this well emailed back on forth and um since our evaluations were done during this calendar year already they they erased what we've done and they've opened it up so that we could redo it now or since we already did it in this calendar year we could move it and not do it now but move it to next November it's it's really up to the board you know it's good practice to do these evaluations once a year did we want to only three of us participated last time so is there you know is there a wish for all five of us to participate um some districts have the superintendent participate and our business administrator for uh Mr Matthews it would probably be soon to be involved in in in the board evaluation since you're so new to the district um Dr schwar you didn't do it last year which we talked about you're so new to the district now you've had an opportunity um to um to get to know um the district and the board so I it's really you know we've got a couple options I didn't know what everybody was interested to do to me I think it's a waste of time for the school boards to come here and spend two hours and saying just these are the numbers and we just read here if if those numbers are just being told to us for the public they don't understand what's happening it's a waste of time for anybody watching the meetings or anybody attending I disagree you'll be shocked no I disagree right but um I think that um I think it's a worthwhile exercise for put the reporting aside I think it's a worthwhile exercise to be reflective um and then the idea of the reporting is I would think to um generate some discussion and hopefully some um you know looking looking inside and and making changes or you know internally externally however it would be I think that would be the the value of it um I think it's not as valuable if everyone does not participate I think you know 100% participation would be important um on the timing and and this was really what I was going to chime in on is you know I did it last year we did it what in April or May you know right it was early it was early my point being that you know I'm not so sure that honestly what I wrote was as worthwhile as it could have been because I had such a limited experience with this board right so to me a November might be better for anyone who is just starting a term in January and now that you know we don't know what kind of change over there will be or won't be as the years go forward but it's something to consider that would be so are do you think you know just do you think it would be valuable to do it again now in this month or do we sort of skip this only three of us are going to do it right and I don't know you know I know I did it and I don't know who else but you know if there's a I I don't know the answer to that question well I would say that um one in terms of well there's a couple of questions number one is I um I don't believe there's as much value in having the field rep come here and go in detail in a presentation that no one can see publicly the value is in having Mr Lee perhaps talk about Norms across other boards maybe so the way you present that publicly is we could just do a summary but it was very it was not helpful for the public to sit there while we have this internal presentation it was a mishmash of what might have served better maybe an exec and have Mr Lee come and you know just talk to generically I'm not sure how to use his time and the Public's time and our time effectively I did not think that that particular presentation was effective my personal View the second thing is in terms of having non-board members participate in a evaluation of the board is unusual I don't I'm not sure if I'm understanding that correctly with It's Not Unusual it it it is it's unusual in the sense that the board will vote on um on the contractual terms and employment of the two people that that will be participating in evaluation the bo it's it's a very um unusual Dynamic so I had not heard of that but if you have that's fine but I'll just put that as a cautionary element um and then uh the third thing is in terms of timing um I don't think there's any value to doing it now um I think you might want to wait until maybe next November but the the benefit of doing it closer to March and April is that it dovetails with the superintendent evaluation so it gets the board thinking about have we met our district goals have we met our board goals well if you do it in November we just approve you know it's just too soon to say what we've done as a board to be effective were for 2024 so we're coming to the end of the board goals the three board goals we get right but the board I think of them in conjunction the board and District goals they shouldn't be so bifurcated because that means the board's different from what the administration is doing that's the decision we made last year right so that's why that we're having the discussion now so that's why I'm saying that my personal view is to have it all synced up that the superintendent eval it by Statute statute it has to be done by June 30th so it is what it is so then it should all come at the same time in a reflective we're already going to be in that reflective mode when we think about how effective are we in terms of um giving the correct mandates to the superintendent who's enacting our goals it's all coming at the same time so I do think having it closer to the CSA evaluation would be helpful in that regard so there is one point where I I have a difference of opinion I I I value or I'm I wouldn't welcome the input from Administration even though we are evaluating them so like a 360 evaluation but I don't need New Jersey school boards in the middle like I can just like if anybody has input they can we can just talk oneon-one and I can get the input and I would be willing to improve where wherever I need to improve or change but I don't see a need to include New Jersey school boards into this process and I did not find anything valuable in that process so if you're looking for 100% participation you're not going to get it from me is it I know njsba they're revamping the CSA eval I thought are they also doing the same thing for the B Val they're working on something I think they're gonna they had been they had been working on on the CSA one so I think on the board they they made it easier to to co coate the information mam your thoughts any thoughts about this or I think we should discuss this next meeting okay that's fine I have more time to think about yeah and and we certainly can uh continue doing it in the spring if that is the wish it's it's just I wanted to follow up on that suggestion okay um acceptance of minutes September 30th and October 14th I moov those minutes and I guess there was an edit that was made that was out uh today so uh do I have a second second okay all in favor I uh any other business okay uh 11:05 I think we're over what I had estimated this meeting to be uh so um I'll open for comments from the public if there are any we have no one any longer in the audience no hands are raised at this time so I'll close public comment and um make a motion to adjourn the meeting all in favor I I all right our next meeting is November 18th thank you very much this is a long one uh thank you for those who who stayed with us