Adequate notice as required by the open public meetings act was provided on December 17, 2024 by posting the notice of the respective clerks city of Lambertville and advertised in the county. Amen. Jennifer Bachelor here.
Martha De here. Vashetti here. Ryan Keys here. Kevin Golleski. Aaron Olirri. Michael Shra here. Ronnie Tom Marino here. And Jim Gallagher. Do you want to explain my my
Yes. I want to explain. So, you'll notice Ronnie is sitting in the presidency tonight. Jim Galler could not be here tonight because his wife is being honored by the NJA as the art teacher of the year. So, tonight is actually their gathering. They have a banquet. So, I said you need to go to
that to go to our board meeting. So, we want to say congratulations to Lamel and Jim. We'll start with the PTO and the updates. I actually I'm going to read something from Jeff emailed me. Um, good evening
everyone on behalf of the PTO. We saw we're sorry we couldn't be there in person night, but we hope you're all doing well. Last this past Friday, we held our annual trunk retreat. It was one of the biggest trunk or treat events we've had since before CO. We had about 30 trunks in total with incredible help
from the 4H club. A huge shout out to our committee chair, our amazing team for organizing such a fun and successful event. We'd also like to thank the first responders from West Annual who came out to support us, keep everyone safe. Thank you to everyone who hosted a trunk,
participated as a walker, and helped make the night so special. Special thanks as well to the Hulcom family for the fantastic hay ride, and again to the 48 Club for joining in fun. A huge thank you to our custodial staff both at South and throughout the district for always
being so helpful, responsive, and patient with all of our PTO shenanigans. The PTO will be reaching out to all three buildings this week to work with them on a treat to thank our custodial staff districtwide three. A few weeks ago, we wrapped up our Scholastic book
fair at South Elementary, which was one of the largest we've ever had, if not the biggest. Thank you so much to Lee Russo who particularly lived at the school all week to make sure everything ran smoothly. Thanks as well to all the volunteers and families who supported the fair. It was a tremendous success
with a total sales reaching $10,311. We're proud to share how those funds are being used. 460 was contributed to our community through Share the Fair. Thank you. 225 was spent on sponsored books for students using share the fair funds
with the remaining balance to be used in the spring. $1,000 went to the library including several new Spanish language titles. $1,000 was given to Mrs. Kenyonz to distribute books to students. $450 in PTO fund supported classroom libraries
and teacher resources. Our fall enrichment program is continuing smoothly and families can check out upcoming club highlights in the news bites which went out today. This week's spotlight is on Mindful Creations Club. We are currently planning a fifth and
sixth grade activity night at the middle school on November 14th with more information coming soon. Our next kids night out at South Elementary has been moved to November 21st. The PTO has recently sponsored coffee and donuts for staff in all three buildings on October
17th and provided refreshments for the homecoming band. Last week, we donated stuffed needles to the elementary school. If you have a student there, ask if they spotted Ziggy around the building. The stuffed animals will be used for special classroom projects. Looking ahead, we want to thank the Vish
family in advance for bringing their snow cone truck to South Elementary's Halloween celebration this Friday. The kids are so excited. The PTO will also be providing ice pops for all the prek students in both locations. Thank you all for your continued support of our schools and community. Have a wonderful
night and as always, we welcome new members, new ideas, and any questions you may have. Please feel free to reach out to us via email anytime. Hands up. Anyone from the LA? Megan Sinus. um Lville Area Education
Foundation. Uh so we had our annual golf day on October 6th. Uh the turnout was fantastic, better than it's been in previous years. Um we have our board meeting next week. So we're still working out the financials on how we did, but I think it was extremely successful. So we want to thank the
community, our sponsors, Mr. Souo, um for really all the support in making that a very successful and fun day for everybody that came. Uh our next focus is on our letterw writing campaign which is coming up and co coinciding with giving uh giving Tuesday which is on
December 2nd. So we will begin um you know uh putting together all of our letter writing and going out to the community um looking for support. Um we're also in process of reviewing several grants um at the committee level that will be brought to our board uh
next week. So, we're looking forward to to kind of getting into those and um hopefully moving some of those forward. And much like the PTO, we're always looking for members. So, we're actively seeking uh new board members. Again, you can reach out to us. Um we're on our website or through emails. Um we'd love
to have people come and join and and really help uh push forward a lot of things that we put through for the for the community and the schools. Thank you, May. Yeah. support from our students. Yes, ma'am.
Um, as mentioned the home stretch or first quarter of the year, we can look back at a successful fall. Girls field hockey has had tremendous success. They recently became the conference champions. Meanwhile, seasons for the uh boys soccer and football are coming to a close. Members of both Key Club and Peer
Leader are starting to take action. uh e- club recently, just last week, went um on a field trip and peer leaders coming up have an anti- vaping presentation at the middle school that they're doing as well as a parent night out uh later this month, I believe. Um as mentioned before, hosting the truck
retreat, had a great turnout. A lot of families went um and foster a lot of community at South. Um as we continue the year, we're looking at ways to limit phone use. we talked about uh specifically during lunch or maybe it's some sort of like fundraising event where it's a full day everybody puts
their phones in some sort of reward for the students at the end as well as doing survey uh surveys and putting things out to try to use AI in both an academically honest and efficient way as so I will mention that Val and I met
last week and we had a good conversation about as a district we are you know kind of attacking AI in a variety of different ways. Um, and beyond with our staff use, I'm also very interested in our student perspective. So, Val's
working with me now on putting together a survey for our students in grade 712 just to get an idea of their overall understanding of AI and maybe how they utilize it. Um, so that will be coming out shortly. And then as he had mentioned, we talked about perhaps some incentives for maybe phone free, this is
for the high school specifically, phone free Fridays in the lunch period. Um, you know, when I come in sometimes during the student lunch, which I've been there a lot, you know, I I cringe sometimes when I see five or six people at a table rather than talking to each other or looking at their device. So,
we've talked about maybe the possibility of having Fridays where we leave the devices in the locker for the lunch period and we actually talk to one another and have some good conversation, but Val did inform me that there would have to be some type of the Senate on the other side. So, we're we're
negotiating that as we speak and then we'll share more of that information, you know, probably at our next meeting. Thank you, Pat. Um there was there was no correspondence this month but when but we do have correspondence is always attached to the
agenda on board docs further public review. Um and I guess we need to have uh need a motion to approve the reg our regular minutes. We're doing it three different three different delay the regular and executive vote and
then a second for the second. Okay. All right. So, can I please have a motion to approve our minutes from this Martha? Second. All right, that's voice vote. So, all in favor? Anyone opposed? Let me see.
Then we'll have I'd like a motion to approve the executive session minutes for September 29th. All right, that's also um all in favor. Anyone opposed? Any stain? And then we also have our the minutes
from our special meeting on October 8th. Motion to approve those. So all in favor? Anyone opposed? Stay. Now we'll move on to
Yes. So we have two things under our words. First, I'm going to ask Gian Ellen Lennon, our director of curriculum instruction and assessment to come up, present our 2425 NJSO data. And then I also have a superintendent update with a lot of neat things that are going on in
the district right now. So, any All right. Good evening, members of the board of education, administrators, faculty, community members. Tonight, I'll be sharing an overview of our spring 2025
NJSLA or New Jersey student learning standard assessment results um for our school district. The presentation provides district, school, and subgroup analysis for language arts, mathematics, and science.
Before we review our NJSLA results, it's important to emphasize that our district uses multiple measures to evaluate student performance. A single data point, such as a norm, can never tell the whole story of a student. The New Jersey student learning sta assessments
provide a statewide snapshot of grade level proficiency each spring, but it captures just one moment in time. Throughout the year, we use the I Ready Diagnostic, the link at benchmarks, classroom assessments, and teacher feedback to monitor growth and adjust
instruction. The slide up here is showing the NJ SLA, the state assessment, as it compares to our I Ready Diagnostic Assessment. The I Ready Diagnostic is both aligned to the New Jersey state learning standards and it's
nationally normed. This means that while the test questions reflect our state standards, student scores are also compared to a sample of students around the country who take the same assessment. So approximately 3 million
students around the country take the math I ready assessment compared to about 2 million um who take the reading. Also, I just wanted to share a little data about the state of New Jersey. So, of the 590 school districts in the state
of New Jersey, 309 use I Ready in grades K through 8. Um, that's about,20 I think was the exact number that I got um of schools that use it. Um, so I just
am trying to put into perspective um some of the questions that may come up about I Ready versus NJSLA. So I also want to share um that last year in the spring I presented about the growth um that our students made from
the fall with the I Ready Diagnostic to the spring. So as I'm talking about that you can see from that chart that I talked a little bit about the alignment. So the national norms give us an idea of where our students are compared to other
students nationally. Do they are they compared to being above them in a percentile? Are they below them? Or are they about the same place? And that's a national norm as well as the standards on New Jersey. So again, I just am
comparing because I just want to make sure that we take into consideration multiple data points and not just the NJSLA scores. And then you can see some other um comparisons about the feedback. we just got those results in October. Uh
as compared to when we give the I Ready diagnostic, it's immediate. So there's different types of data that we're using as we've shifted our focus on data here in South Hunter and so we can measure student progress and growth and we can also pivot and say where do our students
need more support and how do we put that into instruction. Um so I did want to go ahead and make that um those points clear before I get into the NJSLA. The other thing I also want to talk about or just mention before we get into the NJSLA, which also then has to do with
the field testing coming up next week, is I Ready is what's called an adaptive assessment. So that means students are begin an I Ready diagnostic actually one grade level below and then as the student is presented with different
questions, the questions change based on the students correct or incorrect answers. And then based on where the student um ends the assessment, it's a scaled score. So it adapts to where the
student is and the the skills and standards that they are successful and then where they need additional support. The diagnostic is actually only expected to for students to gain about 50% of the questions correct. That means that we
then develop the program develops what's called a personalized learning path. There was a lot of information about an I Ready adaptive, but the reason I'm telling you is that because the New Jersey standard learn SL NJSLA is shifting to an adaptive test model in
the spring. So, I think the state has realized what we've all realized with an adaptive assessment and not just an assessment that um evaluates students on the end of the year progress for two hours in May. And so, we know very very
little about the NJSLA adaptive assessment in the spring. We know that the field test that the students will be taking next week and the following week at the high school is really truly just to test the questions. We will not get
results. We actually don't even need to assign rosters other than to make the program work. It's really just for the state and Cambium, the new assessment company, to test their questions. So with all of that, next week we will have
our field tests and um they will be given at the middle school on Monday and Wednesday and then the following week at the high school I think it's Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Um and then based on the testing of the questions, we'll get
more information hopefully throughout the year and then in May the students will be given an adaptive test. We don't know anything more than that right now. um lot of information before we dive into actually how the district did, but I just wanted to share a little bit
about um the context of where we are right now. Always I always link the NJSLA student learning standards and on that link you can see the national um the New Jersey DOE website and it has all of the
standards for all of the content areas. Um students are assessed again for those that are new to the NJSLA in language arts and math and then in science it only in grades 5, 8 and 11. And it does on the slide I did note that um grades
five it is assessed on science material from 3 to 5. 8th grade is from 6 to 8 and then the 11th grade is science content taught from 9 to 11. These are the performance levels. Again,
750 is where our magic number is as the beginning of what we call our meeting expectations performance band. We refer to those as performance bands or levels. Um, and it is the same scoring for both ELA and math. Science is a little
different and you'll see that on the science chart when I show that. So, here we'll go through a little bit of an overview. What I'll share with you is the language arts, the math, and then the science. Um, we'll look first at the
language arts. And what we're looking at here is the growth over three years. The board has a copy or will have a copy of it that they can view more closely, but what I did was I circled in green things that we
should highlight and that indicates student growth. And that's what that green circle is. It's a little hard to see on the bottom, but those are the performance bands. If we look at specific grade levels, grade four really
stands out um as 60 64.6% of the students are above grade level at or above grade level. So, grade four is a cohort that we are following that is doing very well. Grade six also performs
strongly with 52.2% 2% of the students meeting expectations. It's the highest individual meeting. Um, grades three and nine showed growth. But also at the other end where I don't have circles, but year-over-year, our levels one and
two are decreasing. So that means as you look from 23 to 24 to 25, specifically if you take a look at level three, you'll see that that percentage is going down in level two. And that means that
our MTSS, our systems of support, our interventions are working because if that level one and that level two are going down, those students are moving somewhere else, which means up. So I just wanted to point that out.
um a little bit. This next slide shows the growth comp our district compared to the state overall since the pandemic. The state nationally is not or the state nationally. Nationally students are not
doing um as they were performing on any state assessment um as they did in 2018 and 19. But we are seeing growth. So, we're seeing growth in our district above the state level, which is just showing us that all of the work that
we're doing is coming together to meet those percentages above the state. This is again a little challenging to see, but you will see some highlights um with the grade levels. Again, we're looking at grade four as a cohort. That
is a standout. We're also looking at grade, excuse me, grade three as another one that has made progress. And as you can see, it's very difficult to read. It's small words. Um, but this is all grades three through nine and all
students. So the little green bar, the furthest one is the exceeding. So you'll see that growing. And as if you went back to the chart that has over the three years, you'll see that that is making some improvements. Here's our mobility chart. And I just
want to point out some things about mobil about the mobility um and just clarify some of the color bands. So the achievement chart includes the color coding that can be easily misunderstood without some context. It's important to
clarify what each of the colors means so that everybody has an understanding that it's not necessarily going down or going up. The yellow segment is stable achievement. That means students did not move. So they could be exceeding or
meeting and they did not move. So that is something that can be celebrated because we don't necessarily want to assume that that is going down or decreasing. The red segment although visually prominent in this case just
represents student changing grade level changing performance bands. So a student could have moved from exceeding to meeting and that's fine. We know that we've shifted curriculum around. we've know we've put some things into place that have shifted some of the
expectations of our students. Um and so the red doesn't necessarily mean those are you know prominent in a you know in a negative way that just means students move from one band to another when the results the most areas that we
need to target in these areas. Right, before I move on to ELA, I just wanted to share um when we went in a little bit deeper into the reasons why these changes may have occurred. When we looked at the standards, it's truly theformational text that we see as the
one standard that is the trend amongst our ELA scores. And when we adopted the wit and wisdom curriculum last year um for all grades K8, we did that because of the strong balance that it provides
for bothformational and fictional text or narrative. And so that was very very important because prior to that in many of especially the upper grades of the elementary there was not a focus or even a balance
offormational text. So informational texts are what we you know non-fiction. So by bringing non-fiction in 50% of the information or the reading material to the students, it's going to take a little bit of time for their brains and
for them to understand howformational texts work. They're different than fictional. And so that's why we may have seen some of these um shifts in performance level. And now we'll move on to math. Again, in
the math, we see the fourth grade cohort make exceptional gains um with a 54.2% meeting and exceeding. This is a 15 point increase since 2023 um and well above the state average that you'll see
on the next chart. So this cohort as we've seen is bene has benefited from some of the small groupoup instruction and the way the elementary teachers we've shifted some of our instructional practices. So we've looked at how can we
reuse reveal in ways that we may not have used it in the past. So how are we doing a mini lesson and then how are we identifying students who may need additional support within the classroom. And so that's really where we see those instructional shifts. Um, and we need we
know that we need some we need to address some of the seventh and eighth grade um, standards. And when we specifically pulled those, they're called evidence statements from the NJSLA, we saw that our seventh our
current seventh graders, the main areas of focus are geometry and statistics and probability. Statistics and probability is a relatively new we call domain for students at that level. And so it might not be surprising that they did not
master it the first time they were exposed to it. In our current eighth grade, the evidence statements and where we see the most um the weaknesses and where we see the most need for targeted support is ratios and proportions and
algebraic equations. So again, our students have been exposed to algebra and algebraic expressions since kindergarten, but at this point in the middle school, they're now being asked to use algebra and algebraic expressions. Ratios and proportions,
again, a relatively newer concept, and maybe the students then just needed an additional support. So, those are the things that we're focusing on as we are looking at what the students need in the
middle school math classes. And again, this is our district and you can see where we are above the state average and those are the green circles. Um, again, we're making progress over the year.
So yes, we'll have to do something about this slide next year so it's a little bit easier to see. Um, and so basically what we're looking at here is all of our grades and where are our needs and what do we need to target? Um, grades four to
five went up, grades six to seven. um these cohorts show meaningful progress which again has to do with the instruction and the instructional models that the teachers are using. Um what we did do when we dove into the data a
little bit more is we did see that about one in four students in several of these cohorts moved up a performance band. And we'll see that when we look at the mobility slide which yes there we go. So if we think about our small percentages
in our classes or our small classes and we're looking at, you know, a class size of 12, if we have one in four students that move up a performance band, that means an entire going from meeting to exceeding or approaching to meeting, that's actually a very very good number
and that's a strong indicator that our interventions are working and our differentiated instructional models also are working. So, we're continuing to re refine this in our instructional models. We have a solid curriculum, Reveal, in
place that now will be moving into our sixth year. And every year, we're learning new ways that we can use Reveal. And actually, every year, Reveal is providing more resources within their curricular program that other districts
and the publishers and everything have been asked. So, it's not a stagnant program. It's not anything that we bought six years ago and it's still the same. It's everchanging. Um and we get those updated resources based on um our
relationship with Reveal as we go ahead and look at science. Um our scores in science improved. Um, I think that what we need to know about the science assessment and NJSLA is that
after last year and so many different districts went on district improvement plans because of the science results, there's a lot of work to do with science. Um but that's not to um disregard where we need to focus our
instruction and our students did well when we analyze the different domains in life science. Earth science is certainly something that still needs to be um looked at more carefully throughout our curriculum module. Um but overall our
fifth, 8th and 11th graders have their scores have increased as we look at um the growth and above the state average. We're going to go ahead and shift into now the demographic slides. These slides
are what we call the subgroup analysis. And these are the slides that the New Jersey Department of Education says every school district in the state of New Jersey must share with the public. So when we look at the subgroup data, we
are looking at our subgroup race, we're looking at a subgroup of gender, and we're looking at a subgroup of program. So when we look at the performance of a race and ethnicity, um the district continues to monitor achievement gaps. um our white and Hispanic student groups
remain the largest cohorts, but Hispanic students demonstrated they demonstrated some steady growth, but we know there's more that needs to be done. Um and so as we look at certain some of these gaps or challenges, we understand that where do
we need to target these small groups? Is it in an ESL class? Is it in a tiered three or tier 2 small group during accelerate? And so we're having those conversations now as we move that's excuse me that's the subgroup for race
map. Now the subgroup of science we um we are looking at how we can identify um these subgroups especially our Hispanic and black populations. Um we definitely have
some work to do with the white population as well as we see that near proficiency again science has four bands below proficiency near proficient proficiency and then advanced proficiency. Um we have aligned our
science materials. We have addition we have bought additional resources um so that students have access to science materials that they have not had in the past. And we are just continuing to monitor through assessments. We also have implemented benchmark assessments
in science three times a year. So we can also monitor and see the growth of the science standards. The next subgroup is gender and the gender differences continue to mirror what we see in the state and national
trends. Female students slightly outperform males in language arts, while we'll see in the math um the male students tend to perform marginally higher in math and science. We're using this data to inform instructional strategies that can help engage our
learners. Um, in this case, we did see um the females outperforming in math and then the males outperforming in exceeding. And lastly, the last subgroup that we report out on is called program. And
this is our English language learners, our free and reduced lunch, our students that have a 504 um special education, and then gen educa general education. Um we know that our
um ELELLL students or English language learner students uh have the most needs when it comes to our language arts program. um depending on when the student came to the country and the
district um is dependent on when and if they have to take the NJSLA. So um it is not offered in Spanish for English language arts. They can take it in math based on their WEDA score. Um so
there is a large discrepancy with our English language learners. Um and that is something that all states and or excuse me all districts in the state face. Um but it's not to say that we don't address it and we aren't doing
things we can. We currently um adopted in our science curriculum. Um we bought purchased the Spanish versions so that they can listen so students um certain ELLL students can listen to the Spanish
lessons from um the text or in Spanish. Um so we are able to do that as well as any Spanish materials that um we could purchase. So, if we could purchase the science material, the student workbook. Um, we did purchase a few st student
workbooks in math um in Spanish for students. Um, and we do use the LL program um that has a science pathway that they can listen to in Spanish. So, we're doing what we can to build their
science content knowledge um and build that general knowledge about science um because that is something obviously um they may not have gotten um in a previous district. In our math subgroup, again, we're looking at our L's or
English language learners, free and reduced lunch, our section 504s, special ed, and um general education. Um, we know that we need to continually look at our special ed population and expose
them to grade level material. Um, and this is a shift from what we might have done years ago in the sense of we are exposing them to the reveal curriculum and exposing them to grade level
standards with any of the accommodations or modifications needed for the student based on their individual education plan. So, we don't we don't I hate to use the word, but we don't dumb down the math or dumb down the curriculum. We
present the curriculum as it is in our reveal program with any of the supports that are needed based on their um IEP. And so, we're doing that obviously in all here's the science for our
subgroups. Um, again, a lot of careful consideration about how we're going to address our L population and our special ed population with the science curriculum. So, our real focus here um is on student
growth. And again, as I said, there we are more than just one data point. Um but I did want to focus on some of the things that we are doing and we are consistently evaluating as we look at student growth. So, beginning this year,
we are implementing benchmark assessments in link three times per year. And the teachers have been um they were trained on what the link platform looks like. And then most recently at
our um October inservice, Linkit um educational consultant came in and met with the teams that gave the assessment so they could look to see what are the standards, how to run the reports. Um and we also looked at those at our data
meetings. So that is something that we are again using to help target our instruction in a very quick way. We get those results immediately similar to the di ready diagnostic. Um and I will present all of those results at the
spring board meeting. Um and these benchmark cycles ensure that we're monitoring the cycle of growth. So we give a benchmark, we look at the students growth, we give it another benchmark in January, we look at the
growth and then we can make tweaks. There are different assessments. So it's form A, B and C. So we don't give the same assessment and it is for that time of the year for the grade level according to those standards. Um so to
address the math scores in um algebra 1, we are piloting a new program this year at the middle school and high school. We have one middle school algebra 1 class and then the algebra 1 classes at the high school. Um the pilot program was
something that teachers were part of choosing last spring. Um we met with consultant. Um we invited the teachers in. They talked to the consultant. They looked at the materials. They had an opportunity to um speak together, meet
separately. They, you know, we kind of did a mini focus group and they decided this was a program that they were interested um to help with our algebra 1 scores. So most recently they got um trained in August with um the ed
consultant with the program that came out and then a trainer came back in October to meet with those teachers again. So again we are providing the resources and we're providing the training and now we're providing the time in our PLC meetings for the
teachers to come together and say how do I do this? We actually had the middle school algebra 1 teacher um go and visit and observe the high school algebra 1 class so that she could see, you know, what she was seeing in her eighth grade
class and compare it to what it looked like in the high school class. And that gave the team some things, some additional things to talk about and some more questions to say, how are we making this work? Um so that is how we're addressing the algebra scores. Um, we're
continuing with our data meetings three times a year with any additional meetings scheduled as needed. So if a teacher comes to um one of the standards of support teachers and said or principal or Dr. Miller and says we have
this concern, we would like to have a meeting. Absolutely. So the three times a year is the whole school coming together at different times to meet with the team and look at the data. But that's also we are know that there are things that change throughout the year
and that we can certainly have meetings in between if necessary. Um something to note about the middle school alignment. This year we have consistent teachers um in five and six and seven and eight. We also have addressed some of the
intervention and support needs with having two to three teachers in the classroom. So, those of you that attended back to school night may have met a special education teacher that's in your child's class and you may have met a standards with support teacher that's in the class and additionally
with the gened teacher and many people know that with our class sizes of less than 20 sometimes even 12 and 13 there's a lot that we can do with that um providing small groupoup instruction and um meeting the needs of specific
students. Um, we also now at the middle school have intervention specialists at every grade level. So, we have teachers that are specifically servicing our ELA, all grade levels, and our MAT um, all grade levels. We're going to continue with the high impact tutoring. We're
looking at different ways that we can ensure that it is worthwhile and we're getting the students we need and the data we need to support th those students and their learning. and we're looking at the accelerate period in the middle school to focus specific skills
deficiencies um in seventh and eighth grade in ELA and math. So you heard me talk about ratios and proportions and algebraic expressions, geometry and statistics and probability as well asformational text. Those are going to be the focuses of the seventh and eighth
grade accelerate block. Um and then looking at our benchmark analysis tools um and student to track student progress. So, what are we looking at with our linket benchmarks, our classroom assessments, our reveal benchmarks, and um how we're doing on
all of those. And I just want to say in closing um first I want to thank the teachers for all of the work and that they do to support our students. um they work tirelessly to with new schedules, new
teams, um new curriculum and how to put it all together because it's quite a puzzle as you can imagine and maintain all of the things that they need to maintain. Smiles for Friday and Halloween that's coming and Red Ribbon Week and all the things that they do,
fun Fridays, playground, all the things that we do um to make a excellent experience for our students. Um, but I also want to make sure that we focus on student growth and not just proficiency. We are building systems to ensure that
every student has the opportunity to grow. It doesn't happen overnight for anyone that's been any part of institutional change. We're doing everything we can, but we know we consistently need to tweak things, but we don't want to change too much because
we want to see how it's playing out. Um, somebody said to me last week, and it was very appropriate for the way I usually think, um, you know, don't let perfection be the enemy of good. And I was like, oh, right, right. We're doing a lot of really great things here. And
so, I just want to celebrate that. I want to bring the board's attention to that. I want to make sure that the board, the community, the teachers, administrators know that we're all working together to provide the best possible experience for our students. The redesign at the high school is
another way that we're looking at um what it looks like to be a graduate here at South Hunter and what kind of skills are we preparing our students for? Um but yet we understand that the student this New Jersey student learning assessment is something that all stu
schools need to do. Um and we're going to take the results very seriously, but we're also going to take them as part of a multiple measure. What is it that our students do well? How can we consistently shift that thinking? Thank you.
Questions from the board on this presentation before we move to my update. Um I just one thing had occurred to me while we were talking about um thank you for the presentation and all the information um that we that we look at
every year. I know it's a lot to go through. Um, but so this something just occurred to me with our seventh and eighth graders and I was, you know, thinking back and looking at our fourth grade cohort and I was thinking about those seventh and eighth graders where
they were five years ago in COVID and they were like second, third grade, right? And our fourth graders now who are doing well, they had a pretty typical school year for those grades. Um, so I'm wondering, do we have do we
know is there any correlation with those the algebraic concepts, the ratios and proportions? Are there pieces from way back in second and third grade that maybe were missed in in skills that are now impacting them, you know, in these
in these further grades? Um, and is that something that we can that we can look at? Um and then on science um I was wondering and I know the NJSLA test admittedly like given the state right everybody doesn't no one seems to
figure out you know taking that test but just science in general one thought that I had um looking at where we are um and I feel like there's a bit of a difference in this age group and the younger age groups that science doesn't feel as handson as it used to be
um and again I know going back to when the kids were younger and going through the co years. There was a lot of things that we did that were watching YouTube videos and the SC Bill, you know, the science guy and a lot of things that they watched, right? Because that's what we had to do, but they didn't do
hands-on. Um, and I didn't know if if from an educ, you know, somebody with a professional education. Um, are there any correlations there with getting back to doing science hands-on that could maybe show up in in the way of learning science? Uh,
sure. So to answer your first question, um so I can't speak to what math program you were using when those kids were in second and third grade. I do know that the reveal program um is up to date with
the New Jersey state learning standards. And so those even those math standards were updated in 2023. The other thing that the standards did um years ago when we initiated the
common core state standards and then when we adopted those and then the publishing companies caught up to what that is. The other thing that we see over and over with math scores is modeling and practice. So that is a
critical thinking and it is it's it's modeling and it's doing math in a very very different way than traditional math and if what so to answer your question there's a been a huge shift in math
instruction so to tie it to what they may not have gotten in third and fourth grade I don't know but I do know right here and now what they don't have we're addressing. So I don't I mean nationally
students since the 2020 have not done as well. Um but whatever whether it was COVID in fourth and fifth grade, whether it was inconsistent math programs. We didn't even have reveal. We had illustrative up
until last year and we kind of stopped and started with illustrative and it didn't have materials. They were free materials. They weren't ed reports. So I think there was a couple different there was some very significant factors that
played into the instructional that they got. And so with that now I feel like we're more on a solid ground. And I also always feel that students as they grow and develop they can pick up other concepts that they may have missed. So,
if you're an eighth grader right now and you may have missed something in fifth or sixth grade, you've got an eighth grade brain now. You should be able to pick that up in a minute. So, you may not have had the foundation. It's but you're going to get it because it's that
much quicker and you're that much more developed. So, what we need to do right now is we need to figure out where those what those gaps are, which we have, and then how are we going to put that into the day so that we can close those gaps. And that's really what I look for. The science definitely hands-on, right? I
mean, absolutely we need to make a shift back to using those materials. Um I do know if in the elementary school one of the shifts also with science is science shares with social studies, right? It used to I think it always have I can't
speak to previous schedules. So they do have manipulatives and they are creating those experiments. K4 in fifth through 8th. Yes, we in five and six we have those same kits. So, they are using the hands-on. We are looking next year's um
focus and the rest of this year is really looking at high school science and what is it we need and how do we address it? Um because it's been a few years since we've looked at curriculum. Um we've realigned the pathway for science 9th, 10th, and 11th. So, that
looks a little different as well. And so we know we need to bring those things back in and make sure um but again when they take this test and a lot of the labs and things a lot of it is online. So a lot of it is manipulating things
online. Um that's not to say hands-on learning you know we're going to throw it out um or we're only going to do online. We have to find that balance. So absolutely. Thank you Mike. Um, one I thank you for mentioning that we are going to be realigning science in in the
next year and I know we've talked about that at curriculum. Um, and I do think that that is important to know that we are doing that. Um, with multiple data points which you talked about a lot here and you also talked about those specific skill sets
um, which I believe for were for our current eth and ninth. I think you said seventh and eth. Um, no. I looked I looked at the sixth grade results for our seventh and the seventh result for our eight, but go ahead. Um, are we seeing those or I I don't know whether you have this on hand, but
are we seeing those specific skill sets being lacking in every single assessment? Are we able to to take a look at that and kind of focus our our I Ready assessments um in order to measure that throughout the year. And um if
we're seeing those skill sets consistently come back, can we look at different measures to really challenge kids with it? Maybe to Jen's point, like having more hands-on things uh and crazy aids,
maybe that's a club that is going to address some some of those skill sets of probability that we can't do in the classroom. So can we can we also look at this in a creative way and for those kids who maybe are need the hands-on
piece. Absolutely. Absolutely. And another component which many teachers use but I think there's a conversation we're going that we're going to have with seventh and eighth grade teachers is a component of reveal map called skills skills
review or spiral review. So that you're constantly every single lesson there is a practice of skills review. So how do we embed that? Because essentially that's just because you can't teach geometry all year, right? We know that
because you've got algebraic and you've got coordinate plane and you've got slope and then you've got all kinds of different things and with math there are very specific domains and they build on each other but we can't make it random or it won't make any sense to the kids. But there are ways that we can spiral
review every single lesson and that's something that we need to make sure we're focusing on because if students are constant and with reveal and paper pencil and in a small group so that the teacher knows exactly which one it is and it's easy you know oh they've got
these three right you don't need to practice spiral review for I don't know uh multiplying and dividing decimals right but you do need to practice it for statistics and proportions So how are we again I always think of exposing students to standards
and then mastering standards. So it's a couple different exposures before we master something right. So that's the point of the sta you know the stu the new year student learning standards is by the end of the year they should have mastered this. They shouldn't just have been exposed to it. They should have
mastered it. So our students are being exposed because the teachers are moving through pacing guides. But have they mastered it? And that's where we need to tighten it up. I think I have a question about the charts that you have with the
information the data from 23, 24, and 25. When I look at those, I find myself wanting to look at the information on the diagonal like following the students from say sixth grade to 7th grade to eighth grade. Is there a reason like and
but that's not that that kind of analysis isn't included in your presentation at all. So I'm wondering if there's a reason why it should not be looked at in that way or if it's just because you know you're just looking at it over time. Isn't that banded?
It was the cohort chart. So we had a cohort chart that I presented to the curriculum committee. It's in here too. Yes. Yeah. this but you have to state requires certain ways that we have to present information but we absolutely look at that for following kids over
here I mean it's great that we look at third grade but we also know third grade is two different sets of kids right last year to this year it's more powerful to look at third grade and how they did the fourth and see their trajectory as they go and where are the areas focus and there's too many variables if you
take the one chart and go on the diagonal because there students that are not included their student right that they weren't the original cohort. We've had students move. We have students join us. So because we're so small that data shifts a lot. So I can share with you at
the curriculum committee and I can share it with the board as well. We have a chart that had the cohort data and it showed you know the cohort growth was 43%. There was a cohort growth that was 64%. They also we also pulled out the non-cohort.
So those were any students that joined and so that data is a little bit more exact um so to speak and we can see that over time. Thank you. And then my other question is um I went back and I was trying to look
I know you go back to 23 but I was trying to look you know at testing from prior to that. Um, is 2019 kind of like this the first time that they that the data can be compared to
what what's going on now? I know that there was a testing done in 2020 and 2021, right? Or if there was, it was a different kind of defin22 next year after 2022. Okay. All right. Thank you.
So can I just ask one question and it's really more of a statement because as much as we are looking at this at high level as the board um I I just want to make sure that to Gina's point right here we can look at it both as parents
and our educators can look at this to watch mobility for a single child as they move through and and that's really the where we're trying to get to. I was thinking every time we do these
presentations, I learn a lot more about the assessment itself. And I was very happy to hear. I know that NJSLA doesn't make accommodations for for children with IEPs or and have um like they don't have the special needs um accommodations
and for kids with limited English proficiency, they don't provide that in in their native language. Um but it sounds like what we're doing um that's more meaningful is when they're studying for it, we're providing those accommodations. We're we're giving it to
them in Spanish. And that to me sounds like we're we're doing the right thing and trying to instruct them. It's unfortunate that then when they're assessed, it isn't taking their needs into into account. Um but hearing that that's that's something that's happening and these benchmarks that we're doing
regularly and the reports that you're doing regularly I think are you know we've we've learned a lot from those and in a lot of ways those are more meaningful and that will become even more important with as NJSLA moves to the adaptive and we're going to have a hard time comparing next year's data to
previous years. So, you know, the more the more we put and I we talked about it in curriculum and we talked about in the school community and I'll mention it later, but that you know, as we build goals really looking at not just Angel, SLA, not just I Ready, there's a lot of different ways that we can measure
student achievement and um so I look forward to that and always look forward to the data meetings because they feel more meaningful um as we as we grow and as we also get more specific in terms of the way that we use data. That's very um it's exciting. I mean to hear about
ratios and proportions and things like that. And like Michael said, there are creative ways that we could, you know, when we identify that there's an area that that students need more support, there are programs that we could allocate resources to to make sure that
specific um cohorts are receiving instruction that is specific to the identified need. So I have one more question. Sorry. It's about the adaptive test just so when you first said that it was going to be an adaptive test I assumed it was going to
be given in the same way it is now like once a year but that the format of the test was going to be adaptive but then you said something that made me think that maybe it was going to be given more than once and throughout the year so I just want to is it do you know yes for the NJSLA it will just be the
spring okay we're doing the field test next week which is yes I No, I meant like after this year. Well, honestly, I don't I honestly don't have any idea. We don't know because they threw start strong in the
fall after COVID and we didn't know that was coming and we had so we had two assessments that year questions. All right, so changing gears on some other topics. Um, just some things I wanted to give an update on as part of
my update. Uh, the first thing I wanted to say is, if you haven't noticed, our new playground is in at the middle school. So, I really want to give a shout out. I posted this on Facebook to our maintenance staff um because they installed the new playground. So, we got
about a year a year year and a half ago, we applied for a grant from the local recreation improvement and we received $74,000 and all the equipment that you see in those pictures were purchased with that $74,000. But then we got a quote for installation
which was and I actually got this wrong in my Facebook post 50,000. I actually drilled into this a little bit more and I had found the original quote. It was $85,970 to do the installation. So that was to dig everything out, you know, drill the
holes, concrete, put all the equipment together, the mulch, the whole nine yards of everything we did. So our maintenance staff worked on this for about two weeks. It's up and running. Obviously, the kids were excited. I've seen them on it already. So big kudos and shout out to our maintenance staff
for saving us a considerable amount of money on their projects. Um, and now they've moved on to the next project, which is the batting cage in the softball dugouts for the new softball. So, um, so I did want to mention this. Um,
many of you hopefully are aware that we sold the Westwell School on Wednesday, October 8th, uh, for $1.2 million at public auction. Uh, the buyer for the property's name is Orlando Velatee, and he's from Addendale, New Jersey. Um the
closing is actually scheduled for Friday next week on November 7th. Um after the closing cost, the proceeds uh from the sale will be about $1.1 million. Uh I just wanted to say that in conversations with the board. Um it's committed to
using proceeds from the sale to pay down referendum debt, provide relief to our taxpayers, and the board is currently researching the best way to do this. Um, if you're not aware, the bonds that we purchased for the 2021 referendum do
have a call back date of July 25th, 2029. Well, what does that mean? That means that when we settle next th or next Friday for the West Annuel School and we get $1.1 million deposited into
our account, we can't just turn around and write a check for $1 million to pay off the debt. It doesn't work that way because I as per the IRS, we're not allowed to do that. Um, however, the board is still committed to using proceeds to pay down debt. So, we are
looking at some different options which we'll share in greater detail next month once we actually close and have the money. Um we in our finance committee meeting last week, our auditor joined us and kind of laid out some different options for us um of what we can do in
order to utilize proceeds to pay off referendum debt. So at our meeting in November, by that time we will have closed on the property and then we'll share as part of my update more detailed on how the board's going to go about doing that.
All right. Um just a few other things to mention. Um so on the agenda tonight, and we'll probably talk about this a little bit when we get to finance, but we do have a contract for approval with Hunter and
Behavioral Health as per a grant from the New Jersey Department of Children and Family Services or better known as PCF. So basically just to give you a little bit of of history, Hunter and Behavioral Health reached out to me in the month of August with interested in
partnering with our school district, specifically our high school through a grant that they received. Um they've been providing services for area high schools within the county for over 20 years. Um we were not one of them actually. So they decided that they want
they had an opportunity and they decided to reach out to us. So, we had several meetings with them just to kind of get an overview of what they would be able to provide. Again, this grant is geared specifically toward high school students. So, when we initially had
conversations, we did talk to them about isn't there any possibility we could expand it to middle school just because we are the only K12 district in Hunter County. All the other high school districts are standalone districts. But unfortunately looking at that as far as
counseling services they were not able to do that as per the way the grants written with BCF. Um so what we decide to do is get creative and what we will get out of this is we will get one mental health clinician that would be at the high school four days a week and be
able to support our high school students. We will also get a youth development coordinator. So what they came around to after much discussion is that the youth development coordinator could support programming both at the high school and at the middle school. So
although they couldn't do per the grant individual counseling with middle school students, they could do programming. So you see some examples there whether it's parent education programs, wellness fair, staff training, student programming. Um those are all things that they would organize and this
individual will be responsible for from a programming side of things. Um they will also be with us four days a week. Um they can do group counseling of high school students. So we've talked about different groups and examples could be students who've experienced, you know, a grief or a loss in their life dealing
with maybe perhaps parents who are going through a divorce, social skills, things along those lines. This individual could utilize their skills to have groups depending upon what our student needs are. Um, and then there's also a program coordinator which kind of provides oversight for the whole program and make
sure all the paperwork and everything that needs to be filed with PCF to maintain the grant. That's a major part of their responsibility. The program uh coordinator also has the ability to take on a case load of about 10 students if need be. The u mental health clinician
has the ability to take on a case load of about 25 students if need be. So the important thing here is and this is even before co I know that was mentioned I know we don't like to mention that word anymore but the reality is student
mental health needs have been increasing for years right each and every year and our teachers I see them in the audience shaking their heads um students come to us each and every day with a lot of things that they're dealing with and it goes down as early as elementary school
right things that maybe in the past we have seen more with maybe eighth or ninth grade. We're now seeing in fourth and fifth grade. So obviously we're responsible for that, right? We're not just here about teaching math and and language arts. We have to develop the whole child and support the whole child.
It's important that we have those resources to be able to do that. So, this is a huge help to us because what it'll allow us to do is to take some of our support that we have inhouse from our folks at the high school and then move them down to utilize more elementary and more specifically at the
middle school, which tends to be a very challenging time for students, right? Grades 5 through eight can be a roller coaster ride of emotions and development, you know, and the way things go as far as an adolescent goes. So by having these services to kind of be able to fill the high school needs,
it provides us to reallocate resources so we can provide even more support to our middle school students. And the other piece that's good about hunter behavioral is that oftentimes one of the most challenging things that we deal with is when students have a higher level of care. So if a student
unfortunately might need, you know, an inpatient or an outpatient program and how do we find those places? And any parent who's ever dealt with that with a child knows that that is not easy to do. Typically beds are full. There's nowhere to go. You kind of keep going from place
to place. Insurance is a major issue, right? Who takes the insurance? Who doesn't? They may have an open bed, but they don't take insurance. So, what do I do as a parent? Hunter and Behavioral can help navigate that process for our students that need that type of care. And they also, as they've done with some
other high school districts, can allocate some beds in the facilities that they work with hold for South Hunter in the event that we have a student that may need inpatient treatment instead of the student kind of knowing they need help, wanting to help, but there's nowhere to go, we could help
bridge that gap. So, um, you know, it's on our agenda tonight for approval. It's free. I don't think I mentioned that out of everything I said. It is free to us. So the next steps for us would be that um we would they have to hire the mental health clinician and the youth
development coordinator. So they will work on that with the goal of having those individuals in place by January 1. And the program coordinator is ready to go. So that individual will probably start as early as sometime in November and start getting things off the ground
getting ready for the folks that will be coming on in January. So I am excited about this. I put here our little visual um of our strategic plan because this absolutely fits in one of our goals which is health and wellness for our students and providing support for our
students. So I just wanted to to reiterate that. Um so that that's an exciting thing that we're you know we're excited about. So, I mentioned this as part of my September update and our goals,
right? We we we mentioned that the high school is really going to be a focus to redesign so our students are future ready by really looking at developing personalized college and career pathways. Um, this is a strategic plan goal. Again, as we look at our little
visual here, the top one is student experience. So, what type of student experience are we providing for high school students? It's got to look different than it does now. So, what I will tell you, since the last time we met, we've had some exciting opportunities to visit some other school
districts, not in the state of New Jersey, and I'll explain why, but the state of Pennsylvania to take a look at what else is happening out there as far as the type of experiences students are having in high school. So, as I mentioned, we we got to we got to do
something different, right? What we've done in education with the high school students is no longer as meaningful as it needs to be. Um, so on our journey of designing a new experience for the high school, we visited two different districts. We visited back on September 29th, New Hope Soulbury High School, and
then we did a visit with Quakertown High School on Thursday, October 23rd, last Thursday. Why are we visiting Pennsylvania high school schools? Um, what I will say is Pennsylvania has a much more rigorous college and career
readiness graduation requirement compared to New Jersey. So, New Jersey will you'll hear all the buzzwords about exposing students to college and career readiness, but there's not a lot of doing in my opinion, right? And you'll
see what I what I mean in a second. So, in Pennsylvania, it's actually a graduation requirement. So students have to demonstrate college and career readiness in order to graduate from high school. And what that means is each high school in this in Pennsylvania is
required to have what's called a career pathways program that provides students with real life experiences connecting the classroom to future careers through internships, job shadowing, industry partnerships, and hands-on projects aligned to their area of interest. In
other words, students are leaving school and going out and getting experience in the work world to see what they actually want to do when they leave the district, which is not obviously something that a lot of high schools quite honestly in New Jersey are doing right now. So, when
we dig into New Hope specifically, what we found out is they basically have three pathways. is called art and humanities, business and communication, health, science, steam, and innovation. Each pathway has a course sequence that students follow throughout their high
school experience. So, students at New Hope don't declare a pathway until their sophomore year. They can move to different pathways, right? It's not like you declare a pathway and then you're stuck for the rest of your time. Depending upon the student experience, they have flexibility and can move to
different pathways. What the requirements are is in ninth grade, all students are required to take a college and career course. That's a semester-based course. In that course, they learn about things like the college process, the application process, the
costs, student loans, how to balance all that information about what it means to go to college and have to carry perhaps debt when you come out of school, resume writing skills, interviewing skills, and they also get exposure to a certain extent of careers even in the early as
in ninth grade. In 10th grade, they make a selection of a pathway and during that time, they're exposed to guest speakers that come in each month to talk about different careers that students have interest in. So, in other words, depending upon what pathway you pick,
there's a whole set of speakers for that pathway. And as students, you're exposed to that throughout the entire school year. Again, as you try to make a connection of, gee, I'm really interested in business. let me go to these guest speakers and see what it's all about of a su of individual who's worked in business, started their own
business, an entrepreneur, whatever it may be. That's what that looks like. And then also targeted trips where students in each pathway are taken out to actual places of industry to kind of take a look at what that looks like for real. In 11th grade, students are required to
do 20 hours of a job shadow with a community pathway partner. So they have developed community pathway partners, local businesses, hospitals, all kinds of different things where they've established these relationships where a student is required to go out during
that time and report back and there's a process for them to do that on 20 hours of what that experience was like. All right? And that's a precursor to the senior year where then they have to go out and do a three-week 60-hour internship in a professional setting
with again their community pathway partners. and then their experience is shared in a presentation at the end of the year with all the underassmen who are interested in going into that pathway. All right? So depending upon what their pathway is and this is a graduation requirement. In other words,
if a student doesn't complete the 60 hours, doesn't do the presentation, they're not a able to graduate. And the presentation is eval evaluated by a panel of educators from the building and each pathway has different educators who evaluate those presentations. So again,
the theory here is is that students are getting out, they're getting experience in the areas of interest, and they're finding out and answering a lot of questions before they actually either a go to college or b perhaps go into a career right out of high school, whether it's a trade or whatever it may be.
That's important, right? Because you would rather find that out during your high school experience rather than later on when you maybe wasted a lot of time and money in that process. As we look at Quaker Town, it's even more intensive,
I'll say. So, they have actually more pathways, business, marketing, finance, arts and humanities, education, which I love, STEM and computer science, and then they have an undeclared. So, they may have students early on who don't know what they want to do and want to dabble a little bit in everything to
kind of get a better idea of what this looks like. Each pathway has a course sequence that students follow throughout the high school experience. So, as an incoming ninth grader, you have an idea of kind of what you like. You're going to get exposed to a lot of things. And then in 10th grade, you're going to make
your career your career pathway selection. And the counselor is going to say to you, here's the courses sequentially that you're going to take in 10th, 11th, and 12th grade to meet the requirements of that pathway depending upon what pathway it is. So, you know, kind of laid out exactly what
that looks like. Now, in ninth grade, what they do is they bring all their ninth grade students together once a month, and they have two pathway coordinators, which is really like their full-time job. And within that setting, they begin to get that instruction in employability, soft skills, course
planning, exposure to all the different pathways that are listed above and different careers that are in those pathways. So, that is in ninth grade. In 10th grade, they then have what's called a pathway advisory. So every teacher gets in the building and they have about they have about 1,600 students. So about
400 of grade level obviously much bigger than us. Every teacher gets assigned to them 15 students that are going to be their in what's called their pathway advisory. And that teacher is literally continuing to check in with those students. They have time building their schedule where they meet to see where
they are in the requirements that they need to do during their sophomore year, junior year, and senior year to meet these graduation requirements. as far as exposure in the field that they're interested in. In 11th grade, they do two 20our fuel placements, one each
semester with a community partner match to students. So in Soulberry, New Hope Soulberry, they did this 60 hours at the end of their senior year. Now, what we're saying with this program is they're actually starting their junior year, right? So they have time built into their schedule and there's
flexibility. If students want to do it during the school day, there's a way to do it that way. If a student wants to do it after school hours on the weekend, whatever it is, there's total flexibility. It's totally up to the student depending upon the relationship that they have with their career pathway
partner. The student and the advisors for the program actually work together to build C pathway partner. Right? If a student really wants to be an attorney and they have someone they know that works in an attorney's office and is an attorney and they can develop that
partnership, great. If they can't, then the school's going to get involved and they're going to work with some of the connections they have. And you'll see in a second just some examples of all the different things and partners that Quaker Town specifically has. In 12th grade, you have to do four 20-minute
field placements. So, one per marking period with a community partner, right? So, that's pretty amazing, right? So, think about it. By the time you get to graduation, you will have done six placements, two in junior year and four in senior year. They told great stories
of students who said, "I have known since third grade that I want to be an attorney. I know where I'm going to go to college and I know where I'm going to law school." And they went out and did that 20 hours and said, "I am never going to be an attorney ever again." They're not organized. I'm type A. It
drove me nuts every day when I went there. I am doing something different. And that student is now in radiology. Right. But again, something that resonated that was pretty powerful is the advisor said, "What we constantly preach to parents is we're all about
saving time and money to students and parents." And what does that mean? That means we don't want to see your child go through four years of college thinking they know what they want to do and then they don't and they graduate and then they're looking at you like, "What do I do now?" Because I don't really like the major or the career that I thought I
wanted to go into. And parents may have had that experience already. will know what I'm talking about. This is an opportunity to really vet out a lot of different experiences to know that by the time you leave and again for some of our students that might be, hey, I'm going to I want to be an HVAC
technician. I need a certification. What is that going to look like? We have the Poly Techch program. We have different options. So, when they finish school, they hit the ground running and they're working. They have a certification and they're ready to go. Right now's the time to find that out. Not necessarily when you get in college. Students in
grades 9 through 12 are also able so all four grade levels they have and when I send this out there's a link they store it right through YouTube they have on their website all these presenters that have come in a lot of them quite honestly are alumni and former graduates that have done all kinds of awesome
stuff you'll you know you'll hear on some of them that I watch hey this is so and so from the class of 2008 and they're here today to talk about how to be a filmmaker and this that and the other so kids get to sign up depending upon their various interest to go to these pathway career expos uh with these
individuals which is really really cool. Just a couple more things I'll share. So this is just an example of like the different folks that they've established relationships with. So like we saw right pictures in the room that we were in of students literally there was one student
who spent an entire week at CHOP with a physician. They went through the the entire process of preop, surgery, postsurgery. Like that is pretty incredible, right? But those are the types of experiences that they're developing for their for their kids to be able to get some experience with
that. Um, this is another I kind of, you know, stole this just so from the education side, they're doing this in-house, right? So they have students who want to be teachers. So as part of their process, they're working with teachers in the district. So for maybe their first 20 hours, they're going to
go down and spend 20 hours with a third grade teacher. See what that's like. Maybe for their next 20 hours, they're going to go to middle school and maybe now it's in special education. Then they're going to go to high school. In essence, they're doing qualify student teaching before they even get to college. Right? So again, an awesome way
to figure out and they told stories where, you know, Johnny Jones said, "I want to be a third grade teacher." And then Johnny Jones went to third grade for 20 hours and said, "There is no way I can do that every day for the next 30 years. I have to figure out something else I need to do. So, again, getting that experience.
Um, I stole this. So, this was, you know, our buddy Cole Mini. You can, if you look closely, I did a field study with Dr. May and Dr. Jimmy at May Dental. I t, you know, what kind of work did you do? I typically oversee procedures done at the office, helping prepare the tools and materials needed.
What was your most memorable experience? I would say observing the extraction. There's a set of steps for each process regarding the procedure. What have you learned? I've learned how to prepare certain procedures and what skills are needed. Um, that being a dentist requires great communication skills.
Your future plans, I hope to attend the University of Pittsburgh for biochemistry and to go to dental school postgraduate. So again, like I mean that's a pretty amazing experience for a student to get at the high school level. Um so our next steps uh and again when
we went we had a group myself Jane Allen um our principal Adam Wright Jason Miller who's the vice principal we brought both our counselors Bay Peterson and Dana Kek and then when we went to Quakertown last week we brought two of our teachers as well we are working on one more visit in Pennsylvania that
we'll hope we can nail down in the next couple weeks. Um, we have a high school staff committee that's working on this, taking all this information and making decisions on what would be the best fit for our high school. Could we incorporate aspects from all of our visits depending upon what fits? We are
going to develop a five-year plan for implementation. We will continue to provide board and community updates throughout the year. And our goal is to start year one, next fall, right? So there'll be some component next fall what this looks like and it's one of the reasons why hopefully you've been paying
attention over the last month I sent out the Google form about community classroom partners right folks who might be interested in coming in and talking about how their um field and what they do for their career relates to our curriculum that database would be really
important moving forward because maybe we have someone who likes to come in and talk about you know this in relation to math depending upon they're an engineer. But then maybe the next step is would you be interested in maybe taking a student or an internship time of 20 hours, you know, and what that looks
like and realized like when we went to Quakertown, they were very specific like this is not about students going to an experience and like hey go make copies for me or go no no no no no this is like real life hands-on. they have to report back all the things they do re lot
specifically related to this career and their supervisor that they're working with has to sign off and there's awesome skills because just like all of us as adults right they're in a placement and then maybe they're coming back saying to their you know pathway coordinator I don't really like my boss right and it's
like okay how are we going to navigate that right like that's real life you know the answer is you have to go back tomorrow right you can't say I'm going to do something else you got to try to work through and problem solve because these are real life skills as an adult and people deal with each and every day
what that looks like. Um so more to come. Um just really excited about it. Uh I think everyone in the community walked away saying this is what our kids should be doing right as part of their high school experience. Like I said, I think the thing that separates us right
now from other New Jersey schools is that a lot of them have pathway programs, but they don't have the experience of going out into the community and doing things. The closest thing to it is probably the vocational schools who have like the CTE certifications and things like this, but
other than that, right now, for whatever reason, New Jersey doesn't really have this piece. And it's probably because it's not a required graduation, where in Pennsylvania, I think it's been in place since 2018. So each district we've gone to is at different phases of this. Um so
you know and they are required to not only have it but they have to document for the state of what students are doing in order to earn that you know and they get credits for it right they get credits to go out. They're not getting paid but they get credits towards graduation. So again very exciting
stuff. Um we'll continue to provide updates. Obviously, our staff here will play a major role in what the development of what it looks like. And we're fortunate of where we are between right here in Landville, across the bridge in New Hope, Mercer Countyy's close, Hunter County. We got a lot of
resources of folks that we can kind of tap into in a variety of different ways to help us with this program. Any questions from the board? I did just want to make one comment um rewinding all the way back to the
beginning with the playground equipment. uh first to thank our custodial staff for for getting that involved. Um but also I happened to take a trip to Huitt Park today to pick up um a my middle school soccer player and um was very
happy to see that the equipment that was once at Westwell School that we donated to Westwell Township is being installed at Hwitt this I don't know whether it's this week but it is definitely um in existence.
Um, and for those of you who don't know, um, some of the pieces from the the kitchen and also the playground equipment from Westwell, um, was donated to Westl Township by by our board, um, so that it can live on there and our children can continue to use it.
Thank you for bringing up. Just just really quick. First first off, I think the career pathways presentation just gave us was really great, very exciting for the district. Um I also wanted to go back to the beginning though to the school-based youth services program and the parent
education programs. Um just kind of going back to our student board for you know you were talking about cell phone usage. I think a really great parent education with service that they can provide is educating parents about cell
phone usage and kids what's appropriate. Um you know social media you know don't you know shouldn't be given a phone up in their bedroom by themselves late at night. A lot of mental health um issues
come from that. But also maybe if if that takes hold, we won't have to, you know, give a carrot to get kids off their phone in between classes at the high school and at lunch high school even. It's a little easier. So
no other questions, we will enter the first period of public comment. So, as a reminder before we start public comment, we have procedures and requirements that include standards of conduct that need to be followed by members of the public during public comments. If a member of the public becomes disruptive during a public
meeting, including during any period or public comment, the member of the board charged with running the public meeting shall warn the disruptive member of the public that continued disruption may result in being prevented from speaking during the public meeting or removed from the public. Disruptive conduct
includes sustained inappropriate behavior such as but not necessarily limited to shouting, interruption, and use of profanity or comments seen as abusive, obscene or defense. So members of the public are invited to come to the podium. We just ask that you um state
your name and your municipality and that you keep your um questions or comments to three minutes. You went at the very beginning. Oh yeah, you can go. By the way, yeah, I just was seeing someone was going to tell me to leave.
Sorry. It was interesting presentation. Yeah. Yeah. His perspective on that high school. Hey, that's true. Oh, I I just had a question about the
high school redesign. Can you state your name and your minister? Oh, I'm sorry. Joan Vanderine, West Emerald Township. Um, I've been talking to people around town and there are several people that think the redesign has to do with
construction. Oh, so I I like to get the word out when I talk to people that it's not redesigned. I don't know if there's a better phrase I could use because the program that
you're talking about is is amazing and it's not maybe the word redesign is well you're it's the experience. That's true. You know, well getting shortened to high school redesign, but it's the high school experience. Well, especially after the middle school was just built,
then the reaction to the idea of redesign has has not been positive. Okay. Thank you. Close this period of public comment. There will be another public comment at the end. and we'll move on to the report starting
with curriculum and technology. So the curriculum and technology committee met on October 15th at 6 p.m. at the high school. Um Mr. Gallagher was not able to make it but uh the remainder of our committee
was able to get it um along with Mr. Selli, Miss Lennon and um Mr. Suzo. for technology. We did talk about the arbiter facility schedule um and that training was happening um that is
another piece of our community outreach and that we are trying to make it easier for our community to use our new facilities. Um and Arbiter is hopefully going to allow us to do that. And um the athletic schedule will also be integrated there um in in the hopes that
that will help us to understand the athletic schedule a little better anyone who's had to explore that as well. Um they were continuing at that time to work through any beginning of the year systems issues. Um and um Vince, as I'm
sure the rest of everyone in the audience um knows is that this is October is um cyber cyber security month. Sorry. Um so we
were implementing our no before campaign and um I have gotten that in multiple aspects in in my several jobs. Um but our staff um has been doing that over the course of this month and um also that our middle school AB was finally
finished. Uh Miss Lennon talked about the October 13th professional development day um and focused on um timing with working with grade levels and cohorts. Um as as we talked about a little bit earlier, uh there is data
analysis happening at grade levels um now and as I also just pointed out that allows them to talk not only about strategies for the whole classroom but strategies for individual kids as they are are able to talk amongst each other.
U they did have breakout sessions. Um so linkit training happened for grades four and up. the algebra 1 pilot training program um and uh included our ESL and special ed teachers who would be
teaching it and um there was training with the gym projector and the active floor at the elementary level. There was also wellness sessions for our staff um which was very popular last year and um it wasn't noted but the PTO
did provide healthy snacks for for our staff throughout the day and I know that they were very appreciative. We talked about the career pathways program. Um I I'm not going to repeat most of that. Um but I did want to say that our goal is to have something in
place for our ninth graders entering next year. um and that we would have a a phased in approach with the um redirection maybe is the word to use but um we also
talked about AI um the superintendence council met on 10:15 that is the teachers meeting with Mr. Suzo and um they'll be doing a survey both to students and to staff to talk about AI usage and um we also spoke about about
some of the AI um learning that they had been doing as an admin team as well. I did just want to take a moment to to point out here in in um both the AI and also in the high school
redesign program. Um there is a staff committee involved and that is one of our goals as a board for the next year. Um so it's really great that that is being folded in right away. Um, we talked about the achievement
report um, which we went into very very um, deeply there and um, did review all of the required information that was needed in there, but also the best way to kind of take that required information and make it a
little bit simpler um, as best as that could happen. And um then finally, Miss Lennon did inform us that um parent communication would be going out for the New Jersey Universal Literacy Screening
Law. Um and that would include Dibbles test results, I Ready test results, and NJSLA test results. Um and the hope was that they would all be arriving at the same time so that parents would get a cohesive look at how their child was
doing. um that is legally required in the state of New Jersey. Um but it is coming right in time also since we have uh since we have parent and teacher conferences coming up next week. So
is the algebra pilot a new vendor curriculum or is it just It's currently happening. Yeah. Is that is it a new v another like a new program? Yeah. Um any other questions? Personnel
uh personnel committee met on October 22nd. It was virtual meeting. Um at the meeting, Tony advised the committee of the personnel appointments, resignations, and other actions that are on the agenda this evening. Additionally, the by the committee of
the extracurricular stipened appointments for the 25 of the sixth school year that are on the agenda. And finally, the committee um discussed was advised of a personnel issue. And with that, I would like to move it on the
agenda. Second. Second discussion. Uh Martha D. any yes. Brian, yes.
Chemical abol. Yes. Uh Jennifer Bachelor. Yes. Ronnie John Marino. Yes. And Jer. We have policy. We met on October 8th virtually. We're going to stick with the theme which is the use of electronic
communication devices. Uh this is a change to a policy. The policy is mandatory. The change is not mandatory. It's a rewrite of the current policy to include new provisions prohibiting or limiting the use of electronic communication devices during the school day and providing more comprehensive
list of devices covered. The existing policy focuses more on audio and video recording. Um that will be kept. is going to do a slight redesign of the policy to make it clearer and make those two distinctive areas. The real focus is on the new regulation which is which is
really the the the meat of it and it is new. The regulation provides the board with two options. One which is to strictly prohibit student use of electronic communication devices. The other is to permit student use during certain times of the day or certain locations. And the board has because
there is not actually a state statute that addresses this board. That's a certain amount of flexibility to sign a program that works for us. And the pol policy committee recommends that use be prohibited in elementary school and middle school and use by high school students should be limited to lunchtime
on the bus during passing time between classes. Consistent with the current practice. Today, high school students will place their devices in a designated location during class time. Devices must be turned off and passcode protected and students should not be contacting their contacting their parents during a time
when a device is prohibited from there is now going to be in the regulation a specific discipline that is set forth which is new. It will be progressive for the first offense. The student has to turn into the device and get up at the end of the day. For a second offense a
parent must come in. Appropriate acknowledgements will receive the device will be required. on the third offense um in high school that will be an hour of detention. A fourth offense a fourth offense will be extended detention and their offenses beyond that may lose the ability to have your device at school or
at district programs. Um for our second item in first read we have uh policy 511 which is the eligibility of u resident and non-resident students um to attend the
district without paying tuition. This is a mandatory change. that you've changed that came as a result of clar as a result of clarifying comments by the state board of education related to a particular state statute and it now requires that the district charge
tuition for students that had not you have previously been not required to do so including students of non-certificated staff families moving in and out of the district and F1 and J1 visa holders this is challenging for our district because
being a choice district prohibits us from charging tuition to any student. So, we have to thread the needle between what we required to do for this mandatory change. We do have flexibility when it comes to our certificated staff. Those are our teachers. Anybody who has
a certificate issued by a state board of examiners, including school nurses and athletic trainers who can't allow their their they are non district residents, we can allow their students to attend without charging them tuition. and we're going to continue to do that best approach that we take today where we do
not have flexibilities for non-certificated or non teaching staff members. Now today the district does not have any uh staff in this category that have students in the district. So it's not an issue for us today but we do not have the option of charging allowing
their students to attend without charging tuition. um that this is in conflict with our collective bargaining agreement at the moment, but once policy is final, it will take precedence over that collective bargaining agreement. Um so to the extent this comes up in the
future, we are not going to allow those students to attend unless they lottery choice program. uh for student movers. You may recall that we addressed this in April of 2024 um to allow students that are moving into the district where a parent has
contracted to purchase a house or to rent for a period of eight weeks. We would allow them to attend without charge of tuition. We are not allowed to do that, but we are recommending that they be treated as unfunded students at the choice program. So that would basically continue what we're doing today. And for seniors um or for
students who are leaving the district, if it is for students who are not seniors, if it's in March, they can continue to stay in the district until the end of the year. For seniors for the entire senior year, we would allow them to stay. And again, we are recommending treating them as unfunded choice students to maintain what we had agreed
to back uh in April of last year. For the visa students, this is not going to be a significant change for us. For the F1 visa holders, which is a typical education visa, we do not permit them to attend today without paying tuition. So, that is not a change. For exchange uh
students, which is the J1 visa holders, um Anton Tony, do we have any exchange students? We don't. Um and similar to the movers, we would suggest treating them as um unfunded choice students. Um so, those are our two um first reads. On our second read,
and I won't go through each of these, but you have them in the agenda. These are minor changes that are made to a series of policies related to legal services, professional services, uh internal controls, budget preparations, and the special educate initiative to align the um policy and in certain cases
the regulation to admin changes to the administrative code that were made, but none of them are material changes. Um and so with that, I would like to move second. I have one comment that I'd like to make
and it's specifically about the one Martha just talked about, policy 511, the eligibility of residents and non-resident students. So, this has caused a lot of uh frustration among the state uh in different districts. Um, I'm
not in favor in the fact that our non-certificated staff, also our um, least paid employees are not allowed to bring their kids in district if they don't live here. Uh, I don't think that's fair and I don't agree with it. Uh, from everything we're gathering,
this really wasn't a wellthoughtout change. A big impetus of this was that athletics. So evidently there was some districts where they were hiring whether with a pair of professional custodians so their child could come to the
district and play football or soccer or whatever it may be and then this was the way that our folks decided to handle that but didn't realize the ramifications. So a lot of districts um had voiced concerns about this especially choice district. So, the hope
is eventually that they'll consider a change, but I just wanted to kind of put on the record that I don't feel this is fair for our non- certificate staff. Other questions you Yes. A captain. Aaron, Michael,
yes. Jennifer Bachelor, yes. Dr. Dennis, yes. Vina Bashetti, Nevada. Bonnie Palino, yes. Gallery, I can do that. Um, so just some things we talked about. Obviously, I mentioned during my update
sale Westwell and and utilizing proceeds for debt relief. Uh, we also just gave an update on the field turf. So, last uh Tuesday, I guess it was, we did a curs courtesy review with the land use uh
land use uh board at West Annual Township. Uh we presented the project to them. Uh they made some recommendations and then uh voted and agreed on a resolution that we met the requirements of the courtesy review. So, the next
step is we had two outstanding items with DRCC, which we've been going kind of back and forth with them since August when we first applied for our permit. Uh, we submitted the last two things that they were looking for last Thursday. So, we're waiting to hear back. Their next meeting is on November
19th. So if all goes well, we would get approval on the 19th and then the project would start immediately right after that with the goal in mind of having it completed for the spring athletic season just because obviously we know that we have some folks that are
required to go off site because of field space and if we have the turf that would no longer be the case and softball in particular at the middle school level would be stay here for their games and practice. We talked about that um school construction update. So, you know, we're
in the final stages of the middle school. You'll notice on the uh agenda tonight, we have a pay for Ernest Bach, who was our contractor for the middle school. We and there's a couple change orders on there as well, but there are zerobased change orders, meaning that we
had allowances left from soil and rock removal that we did not use, so they were put towards that. So, it's a zero balance. Um, we're hoping that at our November meeting, we'll have our final payment app to wrap up the 58 building
construction with Ernest Bach. Um, which would be exciting. We also have on there uh you'll notice a final HVAC for the elementary school and that was funded a portion of it through ROD grants that we received from the state. So although
there's a payment on there, the ROD grant that we received from the state will be utilized to make that payment. um contracts we talked about, the biggest one we mentioned was Hunter and Behavioral Health. Um, and we also have
to approve a budget calendar for next year, but with obviously the governor's election coming up and depending upon how that goes, as much as the calendar's on there tonight, that could get shifted around because typically when there's a new governor, go a lot more time than
they typically would get once they're in office for more time to kind of figure things out because they'll be starting in January. So, typically the bud budget address for the governor is at the end of February, beginning of March. that could potentially get pushed out further. Uh so we'll kind of keep folks
p posted on that. And then we also have a comprehensive maintenance plan plan that we have on the agenda for approval. Although I will say our long range facility plan is now due to be um revised. It's something we have to do every five years and our five-year plan
expires in July of 26. So, we will be working on that in the spring with our architect um and then bringing that back to our finance committee and then eventually to board. We're looking for I'm looking to approve a second.
Any questions? I have a question about the the comprehensive uh getting plans. What what does the building replace in place like that column actually if something was to happen to the building where we had it caught on fire
or something along those lines? That's a document with our insurance company of just what would the overall replacement cost. So, it's based on that 143 and the that's what the the number that the state debt and then it's the square footage of the building and that
which we all know and I'll just acknowledge it that 143 per square foot has been that way for 30 years and we all know it's a heck of a lot more expensive. It's more about 500 square foot. Really what that plan does is it just sets the minimum u the maximum amount rather that you can have
in your uh maintenance reserve. We're below that so we're fine. But it's just a plan that has done annually questions. Brian be absent. Aaron Olri absent. Michael Shra yes. Jennifer Bachelor. Yes.
Martha Dennis. Yes. Gina Bashetti. Yes. By Marino, yes, Jim Gallery for school and community. We discussed things that we've gone over in every single other report. We talked about the sale of the West Animal School and the
different options and limitations and how important it is that we communicate to the public what we ultimately decide to do and how we we come came to that decision. Um, we looked again at students leaving the district um over the last three years. We noted that the
first years we really focused on high schools. So we want to going forward look at all grades um and establish some goals to reduce the number of students leaving the district through that um additional information. We talked about the community classroom
project which is the volunteers um and we have 18 volunteers signed up for that right now and we're going to continue to promote it but um teachers have requested specific fields so future communication um and promotion will include those specific fields.
Uh we talked about the student board member and potential student activities in the survey. We talked about the career and college pathway framework. Um don't really have anything to add to that. It's a great presentation. And we
talked about the NJSLA report. One thing that we reviewed was a white paper from the New Jersey Policy Institute. Um and it presents um ways to create meaningful and detailed goals around certain age groups and areas. So, that's something
that um we'll be bringing to the the um reviewing with the the curriculum committee to see how can we create those those specific goals. Um and then we talked about this full-based youth services program. And one thing
that I will note that wasn't mentioned was that, you know, Tony did talk about how the um mental health crisis of of students has we've we've seen that in our school, we've seen an increase in kids um needing services and a lot of that even though we did make the decision to bring in a mental health
clinician um on staff, a lot of that does fall on our guidance department. And so by bringing in this contract, we will be um moving some of that work off of them, which is important as they are looking at the current career and college preparation, but also as we
implement this more extensive program. Um they'll be able to focus on and that was it. And there's nothing to What channels did the teachers request? They requested marketing and social
media. I can tell you why I know this because Michael was like, "Oh, that's all I do." Um, social media, Google Analytics, the writer. Yeah. Um, exercise and fitness. Yes. B, was it baking?
Baking. Well, the future pre um promotion will include that. So, you'll get to see that when it when the next Lambertville matters. It'll it'll have the specifics about what teach because teachers are able to ask for things that exactly one of them I believe the baker was a
math class with Brad. Oh yes. Yes. All right. Any questions? Right. And indeed and with the reports we um normally we would do the acceptance of the HIPP report but we
didn't have one last last year. We do um have the fire drills and safety drills that we have to um approve but that's not something we have to vote on. And so now we can enter the second period of public comment. Hello, uh, Andrea Little from West
Damwell Township. Thank you for today's presentation. You've certainly covered a lot, um, with everything. Uh, I just wanted to kind of touch base back on the turf field that was discussed at the last board meeting and then I know um you mentioned you went to Westwell, but I did want to talk
about um so originally when you were doing the turf field it was going to be covered the expense was going to be covered with what you had now, but now it's going to be partially um paid for and then you're
going to be um you know getting a loan for the balance. So, I'm not sure like why there was a change, but regardless of that, um I've just always been hesitant about the turf fields because I know that it's a big controversy going on the state and
there's a bill out there for um to ban turf fields by schools and municipalities for being built. um whether that gets passed or not, but if it does get passed when people have a turf field and it has to be replaced um it will not be able to be replaced
with the turf field has to go back to grats which is a huge remediation and a huge expense. So, has that been thought about as you're going into these um this precedent of like going after the turf field and getting all your final approvals knowing that in 10 years,
which is a long ways now, but and it's not about just pifas, it's about plast microplastics, it's about tires, it's about all the different things that go into it. the runoff of that and how that has to be actually removed and remediated and then grass put down which is probably going to cost more than what
a turf field actually even cost to put down. So, I just um just want to present it to the entire board because it came up last month and just want to make sure like we're looking at this thoughtfully um into the township and runoff of water
and and homes that live below there as well uh to make sure that we're just not putting contaminants in the water. Thank you. We'll close the second period of public comment. We do have reason to go into effective session. We know about how
long? Uh probably about 20 minutes. In about 20 minutes, we will not be taking action when we come out. So I have a motion to go into executive session. YouTube. Okay.