Good evening and welcome to the Tuesday, July 28th, 2026 special meeting of the Wall Township Board of Education. At this time, there is no executive session planned for for this evening. At this time, please uh rise for the flag salute.
>> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Mr. Smite Sunshine announcement and roll
call, please. Yes, this is the Wall Township Board of Education meeting for which adequate notice under the open public meeting act was provided by a publication of a notice on the Wall Township public school district's website and by notice of the township clerk's office and all Wall Township public schools in a posting in the board
administration office on May 1st, 2026. Take a roll call. Miss Adams >> here. >> Miss Barbier >> here. >> Miss Bby >> here. >> Mr. Buffett >> here. >> Miss Dioani >> here. >> Miss Lawler >> here. >> Mr. Smith >> here. >> Mr. Wandra,
>> Mr. Mau >> here. >> Thank you. >> This time we're going to open up the floor for public comment. This is our only public public comment uh session tonight. Uh the board requests that those individuals [clears throat] speaking will be courteous and mindful of the
rights of other individuals when making comments. Specifically, comments regarding individual students and school personnel are discouraged and will not be responded to by the board. Students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of New Jersey. The Walanche [clears throat] Board of Education bears no responsibility, nor
will it be liable for any comments made by members of the public. Speakers should consider their comments in the light of legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and recognize that they are legally responsible for their comments. And we ask you to please recognize our
threeminut uh rule and that this is public comment and not a question and answer session. So, if there's anyone for public comment, please come to the microphone. >> Betsy Cross. I live in Wall Township. I'd like to welcome the new super, Mr.
Beley. Not sure if I'm saying that right. Uh, just a couple things. Got my tax bill in the mail. And my school tax rate from the budget presentation from Mr. Smith was supposed to be 1.3031. 3031
and it came in at 1.312. So the difference in the rate's like 14%. I just literally did that. Now if you could give an update, you know, maybe you should let the taxpayers know. Didn't come in what we thought. And instead of going up $248 for the average
um annual increase for the average homeowner, it came in at I don't know what the number is, but I think you should let people know. and I didn't go back and check it for last year if it was off. Um, but to me that's important. You know, people are having a hard time, you know, paying their bills,
uh, going on vacations and things like that. And, you know, we got to be better. Uh, when I look back in the last two years, um, we've raised tax additional taxes of almost 8.5
million. And what are we getting for it? school ranking. In 2021, Wall High School was ranked 122 and last year it was ranked 176. So, we're going in the wrong direction. So, Dr. Handerhan just tanked all the
numbers, so I'm glad she's gone, but this is what you parents should be looking at for the people that are on the board. Um, I know Miss Giovani never looks when I'm talking. Hopefully, you're writing it down.
Great. Thank you. I'd like an answer. I'd like somebody to get back to me. You know, that's a big drop in the numbers. Um lawsuits. I'd like an update on lawsuits. Um I don't know how much the Trump lawsuit cost us. Um I'd like to
know what those numbers were. Mr. Smith just goes to the county gif and, you know, writes off all the lawsuits. I want to know what these lawsuits settled at. Other school districts list them and I'll find out if Marbor was one of them.
But when you have a lawsuit, I want to know what it's settled for. We just keep can't hiding everything under the rug, which Walt always done, and Mr. Smite just sits at the diploma gif as a county chair or whatever he calls himself, and we don't know what the numbers are. So,
Mr. Beagley, these questions I would I would really like answers for. Um, I just pulled up there's another football lawsuit May May 28th. So, we got another kids suing. I don't know if
that's five kids suing now, but where are we at with these lawsuits and I'd like all the amounts that have settled and stop having Brian Smith hide them. He's not a good business administrator and he never has been.
>> Okay. Thank you, Mr. Cross. >> Thank you. And just for your for your information, it's Dr. Blekeley with an L. Blakeley, not Belely. Okay. Yeah. >> For your information. Thank you. >> Thanks. >> At this time, I'm going to hand it over to uh Dr. Blekeley who will guide us through the rest of tonight's
presentation. >> Thank you, Mr. Maliff. So, just an overview of what's in store for this evening. The first two parts of the agenda. I'm going to welcome Dr. Tim Th in just a moment. Dr. Thihan joins us joins us from the New New Jersey School Boards Association. Dr. Dr. Tian is our
field service representative. So, he's here tonight, as I said, for two reasons. The first part of Dr. Tian's presentation, he's going to provide the board and the public with an overview of the strategic planning facilitation service that New Jersey school boards offers. Uh, school board supports
districts through a variety of of services that they offer. So, uh, facilitation of strategic planning is one of those services. As I mentioned uh at the July 21st meeting, certainly our district is going to engage in a strategic planning process this school year. And so I welcome Dr. Tian to share
with the board what support through school boards would look like. The second part of Dr. Thihan's presentation will be the annual ethics training uh for the board of education. After that, we will thank Dr. Thihan for for joining us and move on. Uh our administrative team will present to the board their
proposed goals and activities for the upcoming school year. and we will invite board feedback and conversation around those goals. So at this point, Dr. Tihan, floor is yours. Hello everyone. I'm Tim Tan. I'm from New Jersey School Boards and thank you
for the introduction. Um, yeah, there's a couple things we're going to break down tonight and by all means, I want to be respectful of your time, but if you have any questions at any point, just call them out. I'm happy to try to answer anything that I can. If I can't give you the answer now, I'll get back to you with the answer. So, we're going
to start off um looking at strategic planning. Um one of the models that we have is called three Rs, which if you look on the right hand sides, it's reflect, reimagine, and recalibrate. Okay, that is um the structure of that is basically over three nights. And um
the the beauty of it is if somebody can't come every night, they can only show up one night or two nights from your community, that's fine. um we make sure that they have all the information that they need and I'll talk to your superintendent about how we do that. Um but they will have all the information they need so they can hit the ground
running when they show up. So our first meeting generally lasts about two hours and the reason for that is because of the first part uh state of the schools. So we'll ask your superintendent and team to create a state of the schools report which is basically the the uh
strengths and challenges of the district from the administration perspective from the school district. what do they think is working well in the district and where would they like to see um some improvements? Then we do an activity with all the participants. Uh we talk about the strengths and challenges from
the district's perspective and then we ask the community because we all have different perspectives on things. We ask them to give their ideas of the strengths and challenges. So our role from school school boards is really to facilitate the conversation. It's not to create the strategic plan. It's to to
allow the community to participate in that and really create a strategic plan that is designed based upon their input. Um, so they'll do the strengths and challenges and at the end of that meeting I will put everything together and I send it to the superintendent who
then can post it on the website so that anyone who couldn't come to the first meeting will still be able to see, you know, what actually occurred at the first meeting. It also serves as a nice reference for those that did go. So if they come back the next month and they say, "What did we talk about again?" They'll have that as a refresher. We
also put it at their tables when they come for meeting number two. So they'll have the strengths, challenges, and the state of the district report right there at the tables that they can reference as well. So meeting two, um we do portrait of a learner. So, in other words, the um community members are going to be
looking at what what would do they think that the skills and knowledge that they would like their students to have when they graduate and leave your district. What is it that you think that is most important for them to have to be prepared for whatever pathway they want to follow within their lives? That's a
portrait of a learner. So based upon that and the strengths and challenges that they see within the district, they start to formulate some initiatives that they would like to see happen within the district to help facilitate that so that we graduate kids that are equipped with
everything we hope that they're going to be equipped with. [snorts] With that, they also create goal areas. So these are the three to five buckets that are goals that they'll develop at the third meeting. And once again, just like the first round, the second round they will uh will give all the outputs to
superintendent who can then can post it as well. We'll have at meeting three, we'll have round one and round two. We'll have those outcomes and we'll have those at the tables as well for them. So at um meeting number three, they look at those those three to five goal areas and
they start to create a goal statement for each one of them. And then from there, they actually create when you look at it objectives. So if you think about what a goal is, a goal is what you're hoping to achieve. The objectives and you can have one or more of them fall underneath that. Those are like
little subcategories that you're saying if we do this and we do this and we accomplish this, then guess what? We're actually going to accomplish the goal that's set forth. And so with all of that and the outcomes from all of that, the superintendent and their team will go back and they'll start to form what
we call action plans. So, it's basically the road map of how they're going to uh achieve each one of those goal areas and all the objectives that are underneath it. So, it's pretty comprehensive, but that act that strategic plan really is your roadmap for the district for the
next three to five years. And it's not something that should be sitting on a shelf. Though, you know, when we talk about curriculum, a lot of times we say, where's the curriculum? It's on the shelf somewhere. But this is something that should be living and breathing. You should be reporting out on the progress of it at the end of every year. So you
should be saying, "Okay, we're going to do a state of the strategic plan at the end of the year." It's one of our suggestions. So you can say in year one, this is what we were hoping to accomplish and this is what we did accomplish. We know that things happen and sometimes you can't get to certain things or things happen and you get to
more than what you were planning. It's okay to adjust the strategic plan based upon that. We've had districts with like COVID where school was shut down for a year to two years where they had to extend their strategic plan from like a fiveyear plan to a seven-year plan because they lost that time. They had to
refocus on something else. It's okay to do that. You're still following the plan. The key though is whatever your community is voicing, you're actually listening to it and then actually creating a plan to address what they're saying. And that is probably the most
important part of the strategic planning because it's your community's opportunity to say what is important to them and it's your opportunity as a board and district to listen to that and then develop that for them because you don't want just one voice or two voices or 10 voices. You want as many voices
that can come to the table to actually come to the table and share that information. So that's our strategic planning process that we use. Um, and I always say we're the facilitator because we're just moving everyone along through all the activities. You will find that
when we're presenting, it's very brief. We talk about the activity that they're going to engage in, and then they're off and running. Um, and then we rotate around to all the tables to make sure they're staying on task, they're not going off task. Um, and we push them back on if we need to. But every group
will report out what they do. So they the way it's structured is they'll work in small groups and then each small group will report out to the whole group and then we come up with what's called common themes or common threads and then that's what we move on as the outcomes for the next meeting. So it is truly a
collaborative experience. So that's our strategic planning. the action plans just so you know and when we talk about like board goals and district goals these same action plans we can say these are strategic plan action plans but it's the same structure for no matter what action plan you're using it for what
purpose so basically an action plan will have a goal and objective and I can tell you with board goals a lot of times I've seen boards not have objectives they simply have a goal and they have all the activities they're going to do there's nothing wrong with doing that it's just a different approach but you're going to have that listed at the up. You're going
to list all the activities that you're hoping to uh engage in as you go through the process. You're going to list who's going to be involved in it and then you're going to list what resources you need. Most of the time you need resources of time, people, and unfortunately money. Those are usually
the three things that come handinand. And then timelines. You want to know when you're going to achieve or implement these activities because if something was supposed to be implemented in December and we're now in May and it wasn't implemented, why wasn't it? So
when you're reporting out, you can say, well, this is what happened. So it's a way to keep everyone accountable to moving along and addressing the things that were hoped to be addressed. And then the indicators of success are how do you know you actually achieved it? Sometimes that may be a presentation at
a board meeting. Sometimes it may be an agenda item that you have on your on your list. Sometimes it may be just the end of the year report. So whatever it is, you're going to list those on there, too. So that once again, everybody within your community, everyone on the board, everyone in administration staff
can all follow along with the strategic plan and see it actually being implemented and moving along from year to year. And like I said, it's generally a three to five year plan. Most districts will choose five years. And so they'll plan it out for five years. And then they'll have in the action plan,
they'll have it with the timelines when everything's going to happen over those five years. Okay. Any questions on that? We're good. If you do think, like I said, if you think of any questions in the future, shoot them to me. That's fine. I'm happy to answer them. Um, just
before we get into u I I know I talked to your superintendent. You guys are doing district goals tonight. So, I just wanted to make sure that everyone's on the same page. There there are many goals within a district, but district goals and board goals, sometimes I see them kind of intermixed, and they really
are two standalone different kinds of goals. Your district goals, as your superintendent said tonight, are goals that he's created that he's going to propose to you that you can discuss. It is a collaborative experience of trying to create goals that he's going to be
hyperfocused on along with his team to implement this year and achieve. So it's a collaboration, but it ends up being the goals that he's held accountable to. When you think about the superintendent evaluation, that very beginning part, you talk about district goals in it.
That's why he's accountable to it. So whatever goals they are, you have to stand behind those goals and you have to support those goals. So the difference between that and board goals, board goals are the goals that you set for yourselves to become basically a better board. And sometimes they're
interconnected with the district goals or strategic planning goals, but they don't have to be. Um, so for example, I went into one district where um and and they didn't have me I want to put the caveat to that. They did not have me come in the year before. So these
district goals or board goals that they created were not ones that I helped them with. Okay. So, I read through their board goals for that year and it said we're we as a board are going to raise the uh students math scores 40% of our fifth graders. That's a great goal. So,
I just started off by saying, "Okay, so what did all of you do to raise the scores? Were you in the classrooms?" And they were like, "No." I'm like, "So, it's that's a great district goal, but it's not a realistic board goal. It has to be something within your roles and
responsibilities." So, I added in there that if they had put the words support the administration's efforts in raising test scores within fifth grade by 40%. That would have been totally appropriate because that's part of what you do as a board. You understand what the focus is and then you support those efforts
whether that be once again with money, time, resources, whatever it might be. So, when you're creating if you're creating board goals, you want to be thinking along those lines. And when you're creating district goals, you want to be thinking about how that's going to impact students and you know that that the superintendent within his roles and
responsibilities he's going to um implement. Okay. So before we jump into ethics, you know, when you think about what is ethics and some people say ethics is kind of boring, okay, just like because it's a lot of laws, rules, and regulations. But
the reality is is that I think of it as bowling. When you think about a bowling alley and if you're if you're a bad bowler or you were a little kid and you were bowling, they put those uh gutter guards in. Basically, that's what ethics and roles and responsibilities are, it's the gutter guards. It's telling you as a
board, you have to stay in your lane. You don't want to go into the gutter. You don't want to go over into the next lane. It helps keep you on track. That's really what ethics is all about. And so the roles and responsibilities a little precursor to that you'll see the interconnection between roles and responsibilities and what the code of
ethics say. So let's just look at a little bit of the roles and responsibilities. The first and foremost is our students are first. That's why we're here. When you think about school districts, the kids, if we didn't have
kids, none of you would be sitting here. Superintendent would be sitting here. community members wouldn't be sitting here. Administration wouldn't be sitting here. That's why we're here. We're here for the kids. So, you have to think about all the decisions that you make that it has to be in the best interest of all kids.
Code of ethics is one of the things that all board members are held to. We're going to talk about that. This is a picture from Ireland. Yes, I am 100% Irish and I go there all the time. Um, it is my second home. And that
is uh dungquin and it is a pathway that goes higher up and it kind of spirals down all the way to the water. And for years, I don't know if they still use it, but for years they would bring barges in of sheep and the sheep would go up and go down based on if they were
coming in or going out on these barges. And they would go up this winding path. As a board, your role is to be on that path at the very top, looking out over the water, looking out over in the in the distance at some of those um islands or whatever you want to call them, rock
formations that are in the water, but not to jump over the wall. First of all, I'm afraid of heights, so I'm definitely not jumping over the wall. Cliff some more not doing it. I stay as close to the edge as I can, but when you think of here, you're not going down over the edge. It's your superintendent's job to
stand up there with you, but it's also his job to jump over the wall. He's got to get down to the water and see the nitty-gritty and all the different things that are going on. Yours is that balcony perspective to look over and to make sure things are running the way that they should. And if you see a storm on the horizon, simply say, "I think
there's a storm on the horizon. I don't know the wind speeds. I don't know if there's rain in it." That's not your role to do. Yours is just to share with the superintendent what you see. Okay? So, think of that when you're talking about it. And I'm gonna bring you back to the preschool days when you think
about those letter blocks. This is a really good visual for remembering what is your role as a board and what is the role of the superintendent? The role of the board is what? The role of the superintendent is how. When you think about strategic planning, your
community basically becomes the board. They're telling the district what they would like to see. you as a board when you're sitting here and you're having discussions in committee or in public board meetings, you're really talking about the what. That's what you should be focused on. It's a superintendent's
job and rest of the team to figure out how they're going to do it. I had a a board that one board member spoke up a while last year and said made an announcement. By the way, this was his second board meeting. He said, "We're going to go with a 0% tax increase." And
he made that announcement. He wasn't part of any of the discussions. He wasn't on the finance committee, but he made that announcement. And I thought the uh business administrator was going to have a stroke right then and there. That was never discussed. And so after
discussion, they did decide, okay, that's what the board wants. That's the what, then we're going to do that. We're going to go with a 0% tax increase. And they did. problem was the board thought to get to that 0% tax increase, they they were going to decide what was going
to be cut. That's not the role of the board. That's the how. The how is the superintendent's job to figure out how the board wants the what the 0% tax increase. It's my job now and the team's job to figure out how we're going to get there. And so they had to make that
determination. So that whole plan didn't work out well for that board because it didn't happen the way they thought it would. But if they had thought about what they are, which is the what, and what the superintendent is, is the how, then they probably would not have missed. Another way of looking at that
is if you're into like architecture or building, you guys are like the architects. You have these grand visions. You put it on paper. You you design what you want it to be. And then it's a superintendent's job to actually be like the builder and hopefully uses
quality wood and nails and all of that. but he's the one that's actually going to take your vision of what you would like to see and and create it into a reality. And that's the that's once again looking at the what and the how. So, I'm going to talk about public comment because that is always an issue
in districts as well. Um, the one difference that people don't understand is that this is the board being transparent. You're doing board business in public. So when you have public comment that the word doesn't say public discussion it actually says public
comment and the reason for that I think you captured it in your opening statement was it is an opportunity for the community to share their thoughts and feelings without you know naming names or being rude or disrespectful. It's to basically share what their thoughts are and it's very appropriate
for a board to say thank you for your comments. That's how public comment should work because it makes it it gives you all an opportunity to hear from the community and it gives the community an opportunity to speak their mind and so that you're aware of what they're
thinking. And that's why a lot of boards will have two public comments though I'm seeing a lot more going to one. But if you're doing two, you're doing one before you pass agenda items. And that's why it's public comment on agenda items only, so that people can talk and share
their thoughts with you before you cast your vote. The one at the end, which is on public comment on anything, that's because there's no more agenda items to pass. So, what I'm seeing now is in some districts, they're only doing one public comment in the very beginning, and it's
on agenda items or non-aggenda items. There's no right or wrong to it. It's just whatever the preference is. But I always say the the way that you can do this is you open the public comment your your public comments and you guys have a clock there at 3 minutes which is good.
Um because most people can get across what they want to say within three minutes. Um and I was talking to your board president. You guys actually don't have a time limit on public comments. A lot of districts do. >> Oh okay. Um a lot of districts do. they will put like a 30 minute time limit on
the whole public comment. The board can pass a resolution on the spot to say we want to extend the time limit another 30 minutes and that's appropriate to do if the board feels there's more to be said on that. Um when you do that though, it's very appropriate to say um anyone
else that wants to comment. If you're just going to restate what somebody else already said, don't have allow that time for somebody else to get up and speak new about something, a different perspective or whatever it might be. I'm not saying that people still won't get up and say the same things, but you
know, you kind of preface that so everyone has that that time to speak. Um, but once you do the opening and you listen, I always say don't react. And the reaction is you're simply listening. And some people will take notes. Um, I can tell you that I was a big
note-taker, so I was constantly looking up and down. I had one board member that um, she she made it very clear in the very beginning that she suffers from ADHD, and so she has to keep her hands active. And so when the comments were going on, she was actually paying
attention, but she was coloring in a coloring book, an adult coloring book, not a kitty one. [snorts] Um, and the reason for that was to keep herself active, but she told the community, "When I'm coloring, I'm not ignoring you. It actually helps me to listen to you. So the goal would be for you to listen to what's being said. Doesn't
mean you have to agree with it. It just means you have to listen to it respectfully. That means you have to be careful about rolling eyes or having private conversations or or doing whatever you do. Um like I said, I'm Irish, so my one issue that I could not
control was that I turn red very easy. And so my business administrator used to say to me all the time, "You're doing good, but you're turning red." and I couldn't control that. So that you won't be able to control but you can control your facial expressions and and giving the attention to the person that's
speaking. Okay? But once you that you u listen then you close public comment. So you're not getting into this back and forth during the public comment because if you do that if you speak then the person that's speaking can speak back because it's still open. So you don't
want to do that because it's not supposed to be a discussion but you close it. One of the reasons why you ask people in the very beginning to give their name and where they live is because you may get back to that person at a later time and that's one way to know who they are. And you might say,
well, everyone knows who we are. You know, we're we have kids in the district, but not everyone that does public comment has kids in the district or that is even ever comes to your board meeting but once in a blue moon. So, that's one of the reasons why you have them do that. um
when I and I've done this too. I haven't responded on the spot because you want to gather information and you want to make sure that whatever your response is is very accurate because if you misspeak, not because you're you're telling a lie, but just because you haven't had time to formulate your
response, it may not be 100% accurate and I guarantee you once it's said, somebody will hold it against you. So, you want to make sure that, and it's very appropriate to do, possibly wait until the next board meeting and then say, "At our last board meeting, we had a public comment about X, Y, and Z, and
here's the response to it." And that's okay to do it that way, too. Okay? So, you can respond to them directly outside the board meeting, you can respond to them at the next board meeting, or you can choose not to respond at all because it's public comment. You're hearing what they have to say, but it didn't require
a comment. Okay? Or response, I should say. So now we're going to jump into ethics. You have the bumpers now in place. Now we're really going to put more bumpers in. There is a PDF of this. And the beautiful part of that is all these cases. I'm not going to talk about every
single one of these cases. We'll be here until next year. But all these cases are hyperl in that PDF. So if you're really into like law and cases and things like that, by all means read them. Um, and you may look at some of this stuff and say that doesn't impact us. It doesn't
impact you now. Something could happen next week or next month or next year where you're going to want to look back at that case and say, "Oh, so that's the guidance that we're supposed to be following." Makes sense. And then you can read more about it. Sometimes you'll read these cases and you still won't
agree with the decision. But I always say like whatever the rules, laws, and and that's in one of the code of ethics, you don't have to agree with it, but you do have to follow it. So, you'll hear me say that again. So, disclaimer, I'm not an attorney. Um, I don't give out legal
advice or legal opinions. We give out legal information. You only get your legal advice and legal opinions from your board attorney because it's your board attorney that has to defend you, which whatever direction they give you. So, the school ethics act and a lot of people think New Jersey school boards
are the ethics police. We are not. Okay? We can give you information about ethics, but we do not monitor boards to see if they're being ethical or not. We do not if somebody has an ethics complaint, we don't do anything with it. We can't do anything with it. You have to go to the school ethics commission,
okay? Also known as the SEC. Um, the school ethics act was really put in place so that your community members know that there's a standard that you're all being held to and that you're going to abide by those rule those those uh guidelines that they've put in place,
those requirements. So, the SEC is supposed to have nine people. It has not had nine people for a number of years. Uh, just recently they uh appointed one new person to it. So, I think we're up to seven people now out of the nine, which is very important
because they've been running only with six. Um, but it's broken up so that you have an even division of um different interests and backgrounds. So, you'll see that there's board members, there's um school administrators, you have ones that are appointed by the governor, but
they can't all be from the same political party. Has to be different political parties. So, you're really getting a lot of different perspectives on the school ethics commission. And that number six and number seven or number nine is important when we talk about advisory opinions. So as a board
member, you're responsible for all four of these. If you're a school administrator, meaning superintendent, business administrator, anyone that holds a administrator, you're actually required to do the two on the right. You're required to be held to disclosure
statements and not uh and abide by the prohibited acts. That doesn't mean even though they're not held to the code of ethics, doesn't mean they don't act ethically, they have other laws, rules, and regulations that that um guide them and put those barriers in place for them that they're expected to follow. So,
we're going to talk about each four of these four. The first one is mandatory training. You are required as a board member to actually engage in mandatory training. You have governance one basically is a background information let you hit the ground running as a new board member. you take that within the
first 90 days of being sworn in as a board member. So it's not 90 days from the date that you're elected, it's nine days from the date that you 90 days from the date that you swear are sworn in. Um so that will give you the it used to be a year that changed. Um then governance
2 is what you have to take any time within the second year of your first term and that will cover finance and student achievement. makes sense because we're here for students and finance is you're all going to be involved in some way, shape, or form when you're doing
budgets. Finance, the governance three is policy and labor relations. You have to take that any time within your third year of being a board member of your first term. That when you think about that, sometime within three years, you're probably
going to be entering into negotiations with one of your bargaining units. So, you're going to want to get that background information and that's what that provides you. And then you have governance four. Every time you're reelected as a board member, you have to take governance for and that's basically a legal updates. The law does change. It
changes all the time. There's new um cases that come in that change, you know, tweak existing laws or new laws come in. So, this is a constant update. Some board members, especially brand new ones, they say, "I want to take governance one, two, three, and four all in year one." You can. You're welcome to. However, when you get to year two,
you're still going to have to take governance two. When you get to year three, you're still going to have to take governance three. I do see a lot of people take uh uh governance four each year because they want that constant update. And you're welcome to do that. We also have um I always get the what's
brewing with Kathy and Caitlyn. They do um from New Jersey school boards two of our attorneys that do like a a webinar on that and it's recorded if you can't go to the live one. they really give you the most recent up-to-date information um about different cases that are happening and a lot of them are HIV
cases. So, you know, it's it's a it's a nice thing to tune into if you have the opportunity or interest. All these trainings are offered in person. They're offered also live virtual, so you have that option. And then they're live asynchronous, which
means it's virtual and it's at your own pace. Um they added in a new element to it. It's called Coach Carla. It's an AI and it it it's um a tool that will ask you questions and and kind of move you along through it as well. So that's been
enhanced this past year. So the financial disclosure statements, you're required to do that as a new board member as well as an existing board member. 30 days from being sworn in as a new board member and then by April 30th of every year, you have to fill it out as a existing board member.
Um it does not ask you how much money you make. It simply asks you where are your sources of income. That's important because when you start talking about conflicts of interest, this is one of the areas that the SEC will go to. It is also a CQAC requirement. So, if you're up for QAC, this will be one of the
things they look at. And CUSAC is a 12-month look back. So, keep that in mind, too, as you move forward. Um, this is just a financial disclosure case. You'll see on every one of these there's this one says C85-24. That's your hyperlink to that case. So
if you click on that case, it'll bring up the whole case, say between three and 21 pages long. Also, the statute and code, if there's any that are or law that's u associated with this, that's hyperl as well. So you can read that directly. In this case, these are the
code of ethics that are linked. Um, but this gives you um, you know, summaries of some cases that are happening. And what you see in red is basically that we're seeing a lot more uh disclosure cases that have been popping up. So if you haven't been doing your financial
disclosure, make sure you're doing it. Your BA will you'll receive an email from your BA telling you that you know you have to fill it out. Make sure you do. Uh and if you get it wrong, he will kick it back to you and say, "Please fix X, Y, and Z." That's okay to do, too. Um
so we're going to go through the code of ethics. And the first one is that, and I said this before, you are required to uphold and enforce all laws, rules, and regulations. You might not like them, but you still have to follow them. If you don't like it, there's other avenues that you can follow legally and
politically that, you know, you can possibly get that changed, but the laws are in place. You have to follow them. And for each one of these, the top part comes from statute 18A. the bottom part that where it says standards that comes
from code 6A. And so when you think of the top part, that's telling you what you as a board member are required to do. And the bottom part says that if somebody thinks that you violated that, that's the factual evidence that they have to provide if they're going to
submit uh an ethics complaint to the school ethics commission. So they can't just simply say, I think they violated uh code of ethics A. they have to actually provide evidence to support that position. The second one is that as I started off
in the very beginning, everything you do is for the students. It's in the best interest of all the students within your district. The third one is you have to confine your your work that you do and like I said it's that balcony perspective and that's to policym planning and
appraisal. policy is the what it tells the district and everyone in the district, your staff, your administration, your parents, your students, your community. It tells them if something happens, this is what the expectation is of what will be followed.
It's a good thing because not only does it provide the guidance for your superintendent and the rest of the team when especially when a um crisis hits, but it adds consistency so that it doesn't matter who is presented presenting with whatever the issue is, it will be handled the exact same way
because it's following policy. Regulations are different. Regulations are the how. Those are actually created by the superintendent. Even though many boards will approve regulations, it's actually not something you create. That's something the superintendent creates. So that's the how and that can
change and he can change the the regulations at any time. You're also not going to have a regulation for every policy. Okay? It's only some districts will have more regulations than others. Some will have less. Um the planning is we were talking about strategic planning. That's part of planning. We
talk about district goals. That's part of planning. Board goals that's part of planning. Budget finance that's part of planning. Schedules um curriculum all of that is part of planning. So you can kind of see that you're involved in all these different areas and that is very appropriate. You're involved in that.
You're not actually making the decisions necessarily on those and making uh formulating the ideas and and doing all the surveys and all that other stuff, but your job is to be aware of what the planning is and then support it and give your feedback to it. The appraisal is
the superintendent. There's only one person as a board that you evaluate and that's the superintendent. It's the superintendent's job to evaluate everyone else. Now, one thing that's not in here is communication because it's not part of the code of ethics, but technically that is your role as a board. It's not necessarily to go out
into community and communicate, but it is to convey to your community what you stand for and what you believe in and what you're supporting. And you do that through your board meetings. It does you do that through the resolutions that you're passing. You're also doing that through um presentations that you're
having or where you're putting your money for your budget and your finance. If you're doing a strategic plan supporting those efforts, so all of that is a form of communication. So even though that's not a requirement within the code of ethics, it is part of your role. Your job is not to administer to
schools. That means you're staying on the balcony. You're not getting down into the water or the sand. Even though you want to go play in it, you can't. You're not going to make any personal promises. In other words, you as a board member, as an individual, can't do
anything. You only can do something when you come together at a legally advertised board meeting with a quorum of the board and you have agenda items in front of you. That's when you can take action. You can't have somebody come up to you in the street and say, "Hey, I want you to do this." And you
say, "I'll take care of that." That would be an ethics violation. You can suggest to a committee, "Hey, have we looked into this?" And the committee can discuss it, but you cannot take individual action.
um you're not going to be involved or um I I'll say try to sway based upon any political groups or um special interest groups. They have a place in society, but it's not in the schools. And the reason for that is because our focus
once again are the students. Politics, yes, there sometimes we'll talk about students, but it's not the same focus. So your focus always has to be the students. This is to me the most important one is confidentiality and that is because as a board even
though much of what you do is public there is certain information that's very private and it's very confidential. This is one of the reasons why you go into executive session and there's I think nine I always get these wrong nine or 10 different reasons why you can go into executive session. Your business
administrator will know all of them and they'll make sure that you stay on track with that. But it's basically in a nutshell, it's lawsuits, it's student matters, staff matters, um safety and security, a lot of that. Um so anything that's personnel is going to
fall within there. Um so all of those and then real estate is another one like because you don't want to tip your hat about what you're doing with your real estate. Um so those are things that occur in executive session and that's highly confidential, but you have other things that are confidential too. Your superintendent is going to be sharing
information with you as a board member and that information is expected to be held confidentially because there's a lot of um considerations that are going on whether it be through committee or whether it be through just discussions and he's trying to keep you updated so
you understand the progress but not necessarily to share it out to the community. Um, don't be one of those board members that takes an email or a publication from the board u from the superintendent or the board president and then puts it on social media. You can't do that. That's breaking confidentiality. That is an ethics
violation. Um, your job is to appoint the most qualified individuals. Um, your job is not to interview all those individuals. You only interview one person, that's your superintendent. Um, but it's your superintendent will make the recommendations. You can learn about how
many people applied for the position. You can learn about, you know, what is the requirement of the position? Why do we need this position? You can talk about position till the cows come home. But you do not go through individual resumes of all the people that applied. You don't ask, you know, you know, can
you tell me what each one of these people said. You can ask why this this candidate rose above the others. You can say, you know, do they meet the qualifications of this job? You know, whatever the job is. Um, so keep in mind that that's your role within personnel and your job is to appoint the best
ones. You're going to support and protect school personnel. And one of the ways that you do that isn't by not talking about them in the community. And that's sometimes hard to do. But remember, you only evaluate one person. So there really is only one person you could talk about and that's the superintendent. And that has to be
through that evaluation process. It can't just be because you want to talk about them. Good or bad, it doesn't make a difference. Um, you're going to refer all complaints to the chief school administrator, also known as the superintendent. In other words, your community members will find you. They will share with you what their
concerns are. Your job as an individual board member, go back to the previous one, is not to make personal promises, is not to fix problems. Okay, that would be administering the schools. Yours is that higher level balcony. So, your job is to redirect the individuals that are coming to you with their concerns to
whatever the level on the chain of command is and then loop in your superintendent and tell him, "Hey, I had so- and so come to me. I told them to go to this level in the chain of command. I'm just looping you in." And then your job as a board member is done on that topic.
So, an ethics complaint can be filed by anybody, anyone in your community, outside your community. It can be what happens here at the board table. It can be what happens in the community. It could be happens what happens on social media. So it can come from many different avenues but like I said they
have to give what statute which code of ethic one or more of them that you violate it but they also have to give the factual evidence to support their position. They have 180 days from the time that the infraction occurred in order to file it. So if something happened a year ago, they can't put that
in an ethics complaint because the SEC will just kick it out. Okay? So it has to be within that time period. Some people will say, "Is it confidential?" In the beginning, it is. When you first file it, when the SEC is looking it over
to make sure it meets all the requirements, it's confidential. But as soon as they've deemed that everything that the person submitted meets the requirements, meaning that you've you've identified the code or codes of ethics that they've violated, the tenants, and you've provided the evidence, it's no
longer confidential. when they reach out to the the board member that supposedly um violated it, they will say, you know, Tim Tian filed an ethics complaint against you and this is this is the position. And the reason why they do it at that point is because you have an opportunity and they will usually say to
you about 30 days to respond to this ethics complaint. And so you you have the right to know who actually filed it against you. And that's what the SEC does. they let you know and then they come up with a determination about whether you actually violated it one or more of those tenants.
Um, if you do violate it, these are the four penalties that can be imposed. The first one is a reprimand, which is basically a slap on the wrist. People do make mistakes and so they'll say to you if it's not too bad, they will say, "Yeah, that was wrong. Don't do it again." And, you know, kind of put you
on notice. The second one is much more serious. It's a censure. It's very public. at a board meeting, you have to adopt a resolution that says ex board member violated the following tenants of the code of ethics and it's very public. The third one is a suspension where the SEC will say you are no longer going to
be a board member for 30 days, 60 days, whatever it is and so you can't be engaged in any board action. You can't be at the board table. You can't be involved in any discussions. And then the last one is removal, meaning that whatever you've done is so bad that they say you can't be a board member anymore
and you're done. and then the board has to go and fill that seat. And you would say, well, that doesn't happen. It actually does. And one of the things we're seeing last year, we saw a lot more of is board members that weren't fulfilling their requirement for mandatory training. That's why they were removing them because I was finding
board members that were on the board and then all of a sudden I'd reach out to them and they were like, "Oh, they're no longer here." I'm like, "What do you mean they're no longer here?" And they say, "Oh, yeah, they were they were removed from the board." And then when I talked, I found out there was a case for it. And that's why we at uh school
boards will notify, you know, you as a district, which we shouldn't have to, but we do. We try to notify you and give you a heads up that you're still um missing certain uh mandatory trainings. But at a certain point come December 31st, January 1st, we have to send the SEC a list of all those that are out of
compliance. Then the SEC sends you a letter and said, hopefully you've never gotten this, but they'll send you a letter and say you did not fulfill your your mandatory require uh training requirement. You need to complete it. If you still don't do it, that's when they just simply remove you. So they give you
ample notice to do it. So some board members when they have an ethics complaint filed against them, they'll say, "I only followed whatever the attorney said." And that very well may be true. And so they use this uh advice of council defense. It has to
actually meet all four of those um prongs of the test which is that the person that gave you the advice actually has to be your board attorney. That you have to um get that advice before you do something wrong. So you can't do something wrong and then go to your
board attorney and say, "Hey, if I do this, is it wrong?" And they say yes or no. You have to actually ask before you do it. um you have to make sure that you gave the full story because your uh attorney is going to make a decision based upon the facts that you give them.
If you leave certain things out, then the decision that they give you and the advice that they give you may have been different if they knew the full story. So, you've got to divulge everything to them. And then the last one is that you actually follow what the board attorney says. So, you can't do the first three and the board attorney says don't do
that and you do it anyway. Okay? that means that that defense is not going to work. Um, so you're going to see I'm going to flip through these. I'm not going to take up a lot of time with it, but these are all code of ethics cases. Once again, each one of these are hyperl. And then we have recusal abstension. Uh,
we bring this up every year. A couple years ago when we first brought this up, a lot of boards didn't know the difference. They never even heard of recusal before. Um, a recusal means that you're conflicted as a board member, meaning that you can't vote on that. Your board attorney has told you that you're conflicted and you're not allowed
to be involved or um vote on whatever the agenda item is. That's when you would say, "I'm accusing myself from the number 15 or whatever it is." An abstension means you just don't have enough information. I always say a perfect example of that is when you're approving the board minutes from the previous board meeting and you weren't
here at the previous board meeting. it's very appropriate to say I'm abstaining from, you know, approving the board minutes because even though you have a recording, you might not know all the nuances of what actually occurred or the discussions that happened. So, you would um you would abstain from that. You
don't abstain just because you want to avoid a tough decision. Um relationships, these are the people that in your life that will create the conflicts for you. Um, we always say we love our relatives maybe, but they are the ones that will create the conflicts. Okay? Um, and if you have a family
member or relative that's working in the district and sometimes even outside the district, but in public education, it could potentially create a conflict for you. Anytime you have that, you're going to want to share it with your board attorney, the specifics of your case, so they can tell you what you can or can't
be involved in and what you can and can't vote on. the advisory opinions. If you think about an ethics complaint versus an advisory opinion, an ethics complaint is reactive. An advisory opinion is proactive. An ethics complaint is you've possibly misstepped
and somebody has filed it against you. An advisory opinion means you're thinking of doing something and you're contacting the SEC to ask their advice before you misstep. So, that's why it's proactive. Um, for in order for these decisions, you always get an answer from
them on when you ask for an advisory opinion, but in order for it to be public, meaning it's published, um, they would have to have at least six of the school ethics commission board members say, "Yes, this concern that was raised
actually could have a far-reaching impact. We could have other board members that have that same concern." And so, they'll make it public. So when I went back to before and I said there was only six board members on the SEC, that's important because if one person
misses a meeting, even if they think something is important and everyone should know about it, they can't make that public until they actually have a quorum of their board of six. And what happened this past year is on December 13th, every
sing we all year long, we weren't getting any advisory opinions. On December 13th, I think it was 20 something were published. 24 were published. Why? Because they finally had all six show up. So, the fact that they got another person at it, hopefully that
will alleviate it and we will actually see some of these advisory opinions coming out during the year. I had a board member ask about advisory opinions and they said, you know, it's an opinion. Do I actually have to follow it? Yes, you do. Um, the SEC will
actually expect that every ethics complaint, ethics case, and every advisory opinion that's published, you're abiding by because they expect you to do that. We use a picture of a police officer because if a police officer let you go after pulling you over and they give you a warning ticket,
that's basically their advice to you to say, "Don't do this again." and it's their opinion, but if you do it again, you're going to get pulled over and you will get a ticket. So, follow the advice of the SEC. So, these are all the different um advisory opinions that were released on
December 13th. Each one of them is hyperl this year. We did something a little different. We just put like a one-word uh question that was posed. So, when you look at the last one, can a board member hire a district teacher to tutor their child? If you're in that situation, you're going to want to click
on that link and read the case and the decision for it because that will give you your guidance of whether you can or can't do that. And here's the second page of them. So, all of these, and you'll see they're all in numerical order, one all the way up to 22. So, there was 22 by uh on
December 13th that were published. So, at your leisure, you can read all of those. Benefits are um you as a board member could potentially benefit from something that's considered a benefit case. And some people will say, "Yeah, but I don't
think I'm getting a benefit from it." It's not always about whether you think it's a benefit. It could be the perception that you're benefiting from it. I give the example I have a board member in one district who every year for ethics, he asked me the exact same question, which is can he donate? He he
owns a paving company. Can he donate to the district to pave all their black top? Very nice, generous donation. He can't. Why? Because even though he's donating it, it's free advertisements. And he's already written to the SEC and
they've already told him no. But every year he asked the same question. So it's not his perception, it's what the public perception may be. So if you have a situation you think it might be perceived as a benefit, run it by your board attorney and they can guide you.
These are just a list of prohibited acts. If you find yourself in any one of these situations, these would be a perfect example of when you recuse yourself. These are prohibited acts cases. So you can kind of see that there's some of those there as well.
These are conflict benefit cases. And so it's a little mixture. There's another one. Another one. Conflict of interest. So you can kind of see there's quite a few of them. So it gives you an idea of sometimes where board members are misstepping when you
start to see some of these cases. Um hiring personnel as a board member. You if you have relatives working in the district, that's totally fine. You can still be on the board. Once you're on the board, you can no longer hire any of your relatives. and don't try to step off the board, have them be hired, and
then try to get back on. Okay, that's the SEC will look at that and think you're circumventing the system. Um, so don't vacate your seat and then be the person that applies for it. Um, they won't look kindly on that, but you can't actually hire them. There are extenduating circumstances if it's a
really difficult to fill position where your um your superintendent can talk to the executive county superintendent and get a one-time waiver because if the one person that applied happens to be your relative, then the um the executive
county superintendent can tell the superintendent, "Yes, you can hire this person." When that happens, you've just created a conflict where you didn't have one before. So if that happens, make sure you're sharing that with your board attorney so that things that you're involved in, you may not be able to be
involved in again. Okay? And this is a impact on committee assignments. So especially if you're a board president where you have responsibilities, it could actually impact your ability to either serve on a committee if you have a conflict with a relative or if you're
the board president being able to actually appoint all the board members to the different committees. That's one of the roles of the board president. If you are conflicted as a board president and this is the case that you're seeing here, you cannot do that. So, they had
to relinquish their ability to do that to a different board member. And on this board, there's the first two on that list are from the same district. That board has historically had seven of nine board members that have been conflicted and can't participate in in the
superintendent evaluation. So they've only had two board members that could actually participate in it. This is the first year where they've had a turnover in the board where I think they had six people that could have um actually participate in it. So they're an improvement there. They are unique and there's no one else I've heard of in the
state that has that uh collective bargaining agreement. Whether you have a relative working in the district, if you do, that's going to create a conflict for you. You will not be able to be involved in negotiations, nor will you be able to uh vote to ratify the contract. If you have a
relative that works in another district that's covered by a bargaining uh agreement, you may not be able to be involved in negotiations, but you may be able to vote to ratify the contract after all the terms and conditions are decided. You're going to want to share that situation with your board attorney
so they can guide you. Okay? And if you're don't have anybody that's a relative in this district or another district that's covered by that, then you are going to be part of negotiations. This is just on collective bargaining. If if somebody from your one of your
collective bargaining units uh endorses you, that's not going to create a conflict for you. But if they endorse you and and give you funds for your campaign when you're running for the board, that will create a conflict for you and you most likely will not be able to participate in negotiations for the
first year. Volunteering in school, you can absolutely volunteer in schools. Um, that's one of the reasons why a lot of people get involved in the board anyway. You just have to be careful about when you're volunteering, giving the impression that you're running the
school. And you can't be directing staff members. You can't be telling them what to do. Um, I always caution, don't handle the money either, because you don't want anyone to think that you're stealing the money. Even if it's only a dollar, doesn't matter. So, don't give them the reason for it. But you can
definitely volunteer in the schools. So these are just suggestions and uh this is based upon what we see from being in the field all the time. But when you're visiting the school, it's a good practice as a board member just to let the superintendent know that you're going to whatever the building is. And
the reason why you're going there because you shouldn't be going in and out of buildings to check on things because if you are, you're actually running the buildings and you're actually running the district. You're not supposed to do that. However, you are your child's advocate first. So, if you're going in there for a parent
teacher conference, by all means, you can do that. Just loop in the superintendent so they can let the principal know, hey, so and so is going to be coming here. They're there for a parent teacher conference or whatever the reason is. When you go, stick to whatever you're there for. Don't deviate and start looking at broken lights or,
you know, doors that are stuck and then start telling people, "Hey, you got to fix that." Or you've just separated from your role as a board member and the reason why you were there. social media. Best advice I can give you is stay off of it when it has to do with board business. Um, a lot of board
members are getting themselves into trouble. Um, where they're posting things about board business on social media. If you look at your policy, most districts have a policy where the board president is a spokesperson for the board and the superintendent is the spokesperson for the district. So that
means you as an individual board member shouldn't be talking about board business on social media because you're not the spokesperson for the board. But yet if you do that, your community may feel that you're speaking on behalf of the board. So the best advice I can give is just don't do it. You'll do what you
want, but don't do it. Um, if you're going to post anything on social media that you think might have something to do where people might question it and thinking it's coming from a board member, you can put that disclaimer from the SEC up there which basically says you're speaking as a private citizen,
not as a as a board member. But it's going to go back to the content of what you're posting because just by using that disclaimer, it doesn't mean it's a get out of jail free card. You can't say, well, you know, I can say whatever I want because I put the disclaimer. they're going to go back to the content. So, if you're talking about board
business, even if you have the disclaimer, you're still going to land into hot water. These are social media cases. I'm going to predict, and I could be wrong, but I'm going to predict that you're going to see more of these as time goes on. And this is just important information
to keep in mind as a board. Um, we know everyone has a life. And when you're at that board table, try not to be on your phone. if you have to take a text or a phone call, simply get up and walk away from the table. Um, there have been cases now where board members have been
on their phone and community members have been opra requesting your private phone because if you think about it, if you're on your phone and you're on your phone at the same time, you may be texting two different people, but it's the perception that you're texting each other and you're having a meeting
outside the meeting. Uh, the same thing goes for a laptop. We know most most boards have their board agendas and packets all online now. So that's fine to have the laptop open, but don't be sitting there pounding away on the keys, sending emails, and doing all that
because they've been getting Oprah requested for those documents as well. So just be careful about what you're doing there because you don't want to open yourself up to that. Um I always said that you're your child's advocate first and foremost. That doesn't change. Um you should never contact staff.
That's not your role. There's one person that you go to and that's a superintendent. And if you look at your organizational chart, which is in your policy, generally most organizational charts will have the sup the board at the very top and there'll be one line going down to the superintendent and then off the superintendent will be all
these other lines to other boxes and other people. And the reason for that is because information goes up through the superintendent to the board and goes down from the super from the board to the superintendent. So the superintendent is that intermediary between all the staff and the board. And
so you don't want to skip that by talking directly to staff. And you don't want staff coming directly to you with a concern or a complaint. Okay? That's not how this works. Okay? And these are re resources. These are all once again hyperl. So if you're
really interested in all the advisory opinions, you can click on this. All the years past, you can go flip back year after year after year. Um yes, I am a nerd. I read a lot of these cases, not all of them, but I do find them interesting and when things happen, I do
go to the cases and it really enlightens me. Um, as a superintendent, I did the same thing. I would use by my board policy. I would look at advisory opinions. I would look at the law. A lot of times I would call my attorney, but when I did, I would actually have all of that so that I was not only saving the
district money, but I can confirm what I was thinking and then he could guide me accordingly. So, um, you should be as informed as you can be. Any questions? I don't know how I did on time, but stayed within it. Okay.
All right. If you do have any questions, by all means, reach out. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much, Dr. T. >> Dr. Blakeley. >> All right. Thank you, Dr. Tian. Appreciate your help tonight. You have a good night. So, next up on our agenda is the
presentation of the proposed goals for the 2626 school year. I'll just repeat briefly a couple things I said at last week's meeting. You know, we are conceiving of this upcoming school year as essentially a bridge year between vision 2026, which guided our district over the last several years, and a
bridge between that and the upcoming strategic plan that we will of course create over the course of the upcoming school year. So the guiding principle for our team as we work to develop these proposed activities was to maintain fidelity to the vision 2026 goals. So
the goals themselves have not changed. What are going to be presented to the board and to the public tonight are the proposed activities, actions, initiatives that will support what one year of incremental progress further would look like to further build out uh those goals in our school district. Uh
so tonight is about getting feedback from the board. So uh I'll be introducing one member of my team at a time to talk about the goal that's most closely connected to their neck of the organization and uh as board members you know please it's it's open dialogue so
feel free to ask questions offer feedback comment as we go through the goals so we will uh terms of timeline I should say um the discussion of goals is also will also be on all of the committee agendas uh before the next board of ed meeting which will be on
August 18th and So our timeline is of course to gather feedback from the board and then turn these proposed actions and goals into a finalized version that will be on the board agenda for approval on August 18th. So we will start with goal one. You all have the packet printed out in front of you. Uh so our intent
tonight is not to go over every detail. It is a very large comprehensive document. There are a lot of activities planned. And so what I've asked the members of our team to do is to just just verbally anyway uh give the board and the public an overview of the highlights uh for the upcoming school
year. So we'll start with Mrs. McCann, our assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction and goal one. >> Thank you, Dr. Blekeley. Um, with goal one being centered around academics, this year, our instructional focus will center on strengthening tier one
interventions by using student data to create flexible instructional groups that support the learning needs of all students, not just those receiving intervention services. We will begin building this foundation through teacher training this summer um followed by
ongoing professional learning and implementation support throughout the school year. In addition, we will also be providing targeted support for our teachers who are implementing new instructional resources which includes IE math classroom in grades K to three,
open sed and mclass at Wall intermediate school and Alex at the wall high school. Um through professional learning, we will ensure staff have the knowledge and resources needed to effectively implement these programs and enhance student learning in the upcoming school
year. >> Any questions or comment for Mrs. McCann on goal one? Okay, Miss Steiner, please g give us an overview of goal two. >> Okay, goal two is our wellness goal, which we will continue to cultivate the health and wellness of our community
through intentional programming and supports that promote belonging, student voice, and agency. At the universal K to2 level, we will build upon the implementation of the seven mindsets program through morning meeting, wellness Wednesdays, and high school
extension activities. This year, we will embed some student leadership opportunities throughout our programs, giving students the ability to lead discussions, problem solve, collaborate with peers and adults in the school community, develop their ideas
and interests, and empower them to positively contribute to the school. We are also excited to introduce the role of the secondary transition and readiness counselor who will transition from Wall Intermediate School to Wall High School with the recent intermediate
school graduates. For students in need of more intensive supports, we will continue to strengthen our counseling services, our behavioral sport supports, and our teams like our INRS and school-based planning teams. We will also partner with the YMCA of New Jersey
to expand access to counseling and mental health services for students and families who require more focused services. Together, these initiatives help ensure that our students will feel connected, supported, and prepared to
succeed. Thank you. Yeah, I had one question. With the implementation of the counselors going from the intermediate school to the uh 9th grade class, is that going to be a continued rotation? So, our counselors really will be 6 through nine and then
10 through 12. >> It'll be an 89 rotation. Okay. So instead of coming from the middle school and having a ninth grade counselor for one year, we'll begin that transition in eighth grade. And that counselor will move with the with their eighth graders to the ninth grade and then go back and
get another group. >> Okay. So they'll have one counselor for six and seven and another one for eight and nine. >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Okay, Miss Bond. Goal number three. >> Sorry about that. Okay. Goal three is focused on engagement and expanding
opportunities for students in Wall Township. And um this year the district is going to engage in a discovery process to better understand the needs and the interests of the students and the families. So, we plan to focus on evaluating extracurricular opportunities by examining participation levels,
looking at barriers uh that may limit student access, and exploring ways that we can increase student involvement. We plan to strengthen family and community engagement with continued effective communications practices such as the S'more newsletter and the social media
posts where we highlight student achievements and uh the positive things that are going on throughout the district as well as continuing to provide meaningful educational resources for the community by our family parent nights.
We um also hope to expand opportunities to celebrate student achievements. The primary focus of goal three is going to be to gather information and data that can help us to make future decisions. So this will be an intentional year of
listening, learning, and evaluating to ensure that the future strategic planning is driven by evidence, stakeholder voice, and the evolving needs of our school community. any questions? >> Could you just give me uh give us maybe
an example of the type of data that you will be collecting? So, we'd like to look at um the different extracurricular offerings that we have within the district, the students that are participating are the levels of students participating, their enjoyment of those activities, and then
to see if there's anything that is a barrier that is stopping families from being able or students from being able to participate in those activities. All right, Mr. Smith. >> Okay, thank you. There are uh three strategies under goal four, which is essentially practice fiscal
responsibility while maintaining facilities. Uh the most popular one is referendum 2022 and we will uh as we have been doing continue to supervise and report on the referendum construction projects through
completion. We anticipate uh being 100% complete with construction by the end of 2026. So, it'll be going into into the winter and then uh with the financials uh probably through the end of this current school year. Uh strategy two, which has to do with school facilities
and enrollments. Uh the district will continue to monitor our current enrollments and the housing developments that are currently under construction, how they'll impact our current school year and uh continue to work with the municipality and monitor the plan developments uh related to the
affordable housing plan and as well as review our school capacities based on our utilization and how we can accommodate those uh future enrollments for the district. Uh lastly, we have a goal of providing adequate facilities
for our support service department. So we are currently working with and will work through this year with our professionals to master plan a district operations facility that'll house our student transportation, our operations department, which is our maintenance grounds. Uh as well as master planning
to include uh central office administrative offices. Uh and we will continue to investigate funding options that will be available to the board so that uh the district can implement these goals. Get all the FNF people excited.
>> Any questions? >> Thank you. >> All right. And goal five is our communications goal. I'll report out on that. Uh so the first strategy is really focused on general PR essentially. Um and for the upcoming school year, we're
really intending on conducting an audit of our platform usage, potentially moving content away from some platforms that are low traffic and looking at where the people are and bringing the content to platforms where where people are at and where they're consuming uh
their content. The second uh strategy is really more specifically about the content that we're pushing out to our families. Uh one of our primary mechanisms for doing that is through the s'mores newsletters that go out. Uh so what we're looking to do is a lot of that content has been focused on uh
general school activities, parent programs, uh and student life. We're looking to embed some more academic and counseling focused content for parents to consume through those s'mores newsletter. The third strategy um is really looking at how we are
celebrating the successes of our district. uh we have so many students and staff members that achieve so many great things. And so we are looking to build a clearer system for the criteria for what gets publicized on our various platforms and looking at setting minimum
weekly or monthly targets for making sure that we are uh celebrating in a very public way uh so that the community understands all the great things that are happening in our school district. Uh the third strategy is new for this school year of course uh that's our commitment to engage the community in
the strategic planning process in the upcoming school year. Um so as you heard from Dr. Thihan tonight that gave you an overview of one way it could look. Uh so we are very much committed to engaging the community as many stakeholders as are willing to participate will be
welcome to participate in the strategic planning process and the goal is to end this school year so that we are in a position uh say June or early next summer to present um a fully packaged multi-year strategic plan to the board
and to the public. Any questions on goal five? All right. So, I just want to reiterate for the board that uh you have I know there's a lot of content much more than we uh reviewed verbally this evening, but you have the full packet. Uh please,
uh continue to look at it. We have committee meetings. And so, if you have, you know, something occurs to you over the next several days, uh and you have questions or suggestions, please bring those to the committees. That feedback will be welcome. That dialogue will be welcome. uh after we have completed the
committee meetings uh for the month of August uh our team will go ahead and refine these goals and have them prepared uh for the board for the August 18th board meeting. >> Okay. And just uh uh thank first of all thank for everyone for your for your presentations tonight. Uh the board
certainly appreciates the thoroughess and the work that has gone uh to do this. Uh regarding the uh what Dr. Tian uh talked about the uh is is it are we definitely is this something that has to be decided that school boards is going
to be part of the process? >> No, that is up to the board. Um you know ultimately we need to engage in a strategic planning process. Uh and it's a good practice to have an external facilitator. school boards is somebody
that is an organization that has facilitated uh many Mammoth County and and other districts around the state, but certainly in Mammoth County, they've partnered um I can share with the board that I have reviewed a number of those strategic plans that have been the product of collaboration with the school
boards. Um and they're impressive and they sort of hit the mark for what I think is going to work for our school district. But if the board uh would like to consider alternatives, we can certainly do that as well. Okay, thank you. And do we have a uh you know like a ballpark uh figure of when
these if let's say we do go with the with school boards and we have those three sets of meetings that uh are proposed uh we're looking at the fall we looking at the winter for these. >> Yes. So, the goal would be winter. Um,
what what is included in the entry plan that I sent out to the community, uh, it projects potentially, say one way it could play out, don't hold me to this, but one way it could play out is say a meeting a month during the months of say February, March, and April. That would be of course contingent on how it fits
best with our school district schedule. And of course, if we ultimately partner with school boards as the facilitator, you know, it would be dependent on Dr. TN's availability as well. But our goal administratively, my goal as a superintendent is to take the first half of the year to continue to listen and
learn, to collect data, uh to synthesize that data. Um Dr. Tehan mentioned that uh if we go with them, uh the first meeting would include a state of the schools report by me as the superintendent. So at that report, I would be beginning the process with the
public by sharing sort of what we're most proud of and the areas that we think are growth areas for us as a school district. So my intention is to take the first half of the year to really gather that. So I'm in a position to in a really informed way uh give the the the public a sense of the state of
the schools and so looking at that mid to late winter time period to commence strategic planning seems to hit the mark. Second, Dr. Lee. Any other questions or comments from any other board members? >> I do. I Mr. Maliff. Thank you. Uh yeah,
thank you to the admin team again. That was um these are all great goals and I'm happy to see all the work that's gone into them thus far. Um Dr. Blekeley. I was wondering if and I don't know if it fits into any of these goals, but it kind of I feel like it would maybe
mesh in there somewhere, but maybe um if it's not this year, but maybe for the following year, maybe um looking into how we could keep a lot of our students who are going um from 8th grade to 9th
grade and deciding to go out of district. Um maybe a goal of ours could be to determine what where where that thought process is coming from. Um you know mainly to the private schools, the St. Roses, the CBAs, things like that.
Um it's just something it's I'm very curious because I've heard more and more of it lately. So um maybe that's one of the things that we could add whether it's through strategic planning or through this year's goals or next. It's just um something that's kind of had me
a little bit curious lately. >> Yeah, thank you for sharing that and uh I'm certainly in agreement with that. And uh my intention is to have answers to those questions going into strategic planning so that we have a sense of what those numbers look like and what the why
is behind some of those family decisions. and that information will be helpful to us uh when we go into the strategic planning process and we set goals for the future. Along that vein, I think that maybe um focusing on the communications portion
of the next strategic plan in educating the people in our district of what we actually offer in our high school because it is impressive especially with the expanding um dual enrollment programs with you know multiple universities at this point plus themies.
I think waiting until 8th grade may be too late and I think uh parents and families may have already made decisions perhaps we start you know in fifth grade. Um just just educating the families on what we have to offer so when they go into the middle school they're not automatically just focused
on uh perhaps pursuing things elsewhere but looking at what we have to offer because we have a lot. >> Thank you Mr. Buff and Miss Divvani. Excellent points. All right. Uh if there are no other comments, I'm going to ask
for a motion to adjurnn. >> Mr. Diovani a second. >> Second, >> Miss M Papa. And all in favor, >> we are