Al to the FL of the United States of America and to the repic for stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all the right I'm going to call the roll Miss am here say miss prpal here miss C Giovani here miss homat here Mr Sher here
Mr Sone here Mr to here miss wtz here miss Cal here notice of the February 10th 2025 meeting of the Board of Education was emailed to the clerks of the burs of essexfells North cell and rosand and to the town ship of Fairfield and to the editor of the progress on January 7th 2025 and the Star Ledger on the same
day we've had a we had a couple of um presentations here at night um we had the dance if you would just Jonathan tell us about the dance yes uh my family and I got to attend the dance team showcase uh the past Thursday um and it it was fantastic my sixth graders already planning on auditioning for the dance
team she liked it so much um an incredible group of young ladies they did a really fantastic performance thank you um D you attended I attended the first holoc but you you and Mary attended the second one so if you could just tell us about that uh sure last week um I attended the OC remembrance event at the middle school there was an amazing speaker um her name is Ruth Ginsburg she is a child of
not one but two both of her parents were survivors of uh the camps and each one had an absolutely unbelievable story that's kind of haunted me since then um I'm the daughter of a Survivor I am a student of the Holocaust and I still was stunned by some of the stories that she shared what was incredible to me was the way the students did not move throughout her presentation and I mean it was a long I think it was really close to an hour presentation and they were
attentive they were interested engaged and they took in a lot of really hard information I was proud to see how how well that message was received and it was at the end of the day a story about not just suffering but also resilience so I thought I was really impressed um I'm just going a second like um Debbie said it was amazing the story um both her parents like she said survived the Holocaust um little interesting little tidbit that Deb
didn't um mention one of the presentations that she had up her dad was in the picture there so that was kind the slides one of the slides myad Liberation from and so yeah um you know phenomenal stories and something that we just have to you know always keep in the Forefront you know the kids like Deb and Debbie said they were amazing they sat there quiet um you know I want to thank Laura Drago and the rest of the administration from always
you know having presentations on the Holocaust and always keeping the kids educated on um you know that horrific time and it was a great presentation she was amazing um we had a rough week last week I don't I think we should acknowledge that it was you know a little over the top for our campus um but I'd like to thank um all of those who made sure that everything was smoothly every all the communication so I just want to
acknowledge uh Mr Mochi Melissa all the admins uh the teachers the staff and the students who listened followed the instructions and the communication to the parents was phenomenal I mean up until SE I think the last email was 7:00 at night to just reassure everyone of what was happening it you know there unfortunately we are in a world where social media and rumors and things you know
tend to go out as a Forefront um and we were able to you know catch certain things in the bud and I'm glad that we are all safe and and um we've acknowledged that um these things are for these things can happen and um but we are prepared and we do our best so I thank everyone here on campus for all of your hard work work and doing everything so diligently for our staff and students can I also add um I just want to acknowledge law enforcement as well oh
every every town responded and they did a phenomenal job and um just want to thank them as well thank you and just uh to speak off of uh what Miss Calderon and Miss wajt said um regarding the swatting incident while there was no threat um our schools did respond swiftly and effectively and this is a testament to the importance of the safety drills that we practice and the
strong partnership that we have with our local law enforcement agencies so their response was quick and um we're grateful to have uh that relationship with our North cwell and all of our sending District uh local uh law enforcement agencies um just on school start times okay um our second School school start times committee meeting is scheduled for Thursday February 27th this one will be after school from 3: to 5:00 um the plan at that meeting is
we'll um hopefully have had all of our surveys administered and the the the real main focus of that meeting will be um our committee will be analyzing the survey results and um the target date for administering the survey survey is somewhere between February 21st and the 24th um the New Jersey quality single accountability Continuum also known as qac okay
our district is in a qac year and that is the Department of education's monitoring and self-evaluation system for public school districts okay the system focuses on monitoring and evaluating school districts in five key components that have been identified to be key factors in effective schools the components include instruction and program fiscal governance operations and Personnel uh reps from the doe were on site last week our building walkthroughs
were also last week preliminary feedback from the walkthroughs and visits so far was very positive um I just want to talk a little bit about um the in school suspension pilot program that I have um I'm recommending to the board um which we hope to start honor about February 24th fourth until the end of the school year um we have a couple staff members in mind uh to supervise students and we have locations in each building uh that we have designated
as the home base for the program in school susp suspension is a structured discipline disciplinary intervention for middle school and high school students who have violated the code of conduct ISS I'll call it ISS provides an alternative to add of school suspension for certain infractions okay the benefit of ISS um one of them is accountability and supervision students remain in in a controlled environment where they're monitored and held accountable for their
actions um academic continuity which is really important unlike um out of school suspension students will continue their coursework while they're in the building under supervision minimizing learning loss they'll have access to Google classroom and there'll be um a staff member in in the uh room with them to help make sure that they're keeping up with their classwork uh behavioral reflection and support students will engage in reflection activities counseling or
restorative practices to address behaviors and develop better decision-making skills um often we'll do what we plan on doing is have having our Abs from the Middle School kind of push in to the in school programs to help um with with the behavior and reflection piece um reduced absenteeism is another benefit ISS keeps our students in School preventing them from falling behind academically and disengaging them from the school Community um it's another benefit and
value to ISS would be improve School climate by addressing behavioral issues within the school setting ISS helps reforce reinforce expectations and promotes a more positive and supportive learning environment okay um while ISS will serve as an effective disciplinary measure certain fractions will still warrant out of school suspension as necessary however ISS provides an additional tool to address behavioral behavioral concerns while
maintaining student engagement and reinforcing positive behavior so we are interested in adding this in um like I said sometime near the end of February and piloting this program for the remainder of the school year and that's um my superintendent report turn over you want to um I would just like to report on
uh me and Miss Westervelt did come or Dr Wester we came to a conclusion with the decorating of the graduation caps um in order to keep the graduation ceremony very beautiful and organized like we always do uh we're just going to have kids who would like to decorate the Caps uh buy a second one and if they want to decorate it for like photos and just you know for fun they can do that while during the ceremony we're just going to wear the regular graduation caps and keep it as it will be and um there's nothing else I have to record on thank
you okay so Mr dberto and I have the uh pleasure oh let me just go back to that one side for a second I just want to make this announcement of presenting giving you guys an update on our district goals but I just wanted to just
calendar reminders uh at the end of the week we're going into president's weekend so Friday we're on a single session day 12 17 dismissal closed on Monday the 17th for President's Day um that students and staff are both out and then on Tuesday the 18th the students are are out and staff are in for a full day of professional development Mr Liberto will'll give you guys a nice update on what we're doing on that day for PD all right okay
so at a prior board meeting I actually introduced both our new District goals that explain the rationale and how we how we ended up adopting those District goals and uh Ju Just to very Briefly summarize those goals were both lifted directly from the Strategic plan okay that had uh voluntary uh committees that worked over the course of a year to develop some of those goals so they were lifted directly from there Damen is going Mr M is
going to talk about uh District goal number two in a few moments uh ensuring a positive inclusive School culture and climate but I'd like to update you on where we are at this point of the year on District goal number one and again there was a lot of data that helped inform the adoption of these goals and especially there were diff two different surveys that consistently identify utility of learning consistently or or usefulness of what students are learning or the Practical applications of what students are
learning as an area of opportunity hence we have the addition goal cultivate career Readiness and real world learning experience experiences for students and one way to really create real world learning experiences for students is to create interdisciplinary units okay or interdisciplinary lessons because the more subjects the more disciplines you can draw into a lesson
or a unit the more that that emulates real world problem solving so that's exactly what we did for the in for our first uh few professional development days and we had a three-part professional development series on interdisciplinary design and here's just a couple pictures of those and these are uh professional uh development dates from August 7 September 16th and October 14th and we modeled an interdisciplinary unit about trees and something that's
passionate for me but it could easily have been about social media and or uh anything else could have been any other topic okay uh we looked at heat islands in the science class uh carbon sequestration in a math class and some and some of the the uh equations thereof and even in a Humanities class we looked at Red lining and even throughout these lessons we also met modeled some of the uh pedagogical strategies that we
had identified through uh classroom observations as also some areas that uh could potentially have improved additionally we took a real deep dive into our curriculum recently and identified a bunch of areas within each curriculum where there are opportunities for this kind of interdisciplinary design okay this was prompted in part from qac because qac prompts you
to really audit your entire curriculum so while in so doing we're able to identify these areas and they're in the process being shared with teachers and it just keep in mind this this is like a first step to really plan these types of lessons it takes a while it's a lot of collaboration a lot of planning time and F but those things are in the works and the later half of this year and and into next year I I expect to see some really interesting things and I've seen some really cool things already especially at the middle school where I am now
where that that team model that they use really lends itself to these type of lessons and uh moving on so I assume that most people watched Super Bowl last night I wonder did anybody uh did everybody see the chat GPT commercial so there's a chat GPT commercial in there if you haven't seen it after the board meeting just look it up on YouTube it's actually a pretty cool little commercial it's this pixelated kind of summary of Humanity's progress through technology and it's it's done pretty well it's like
30 second little bit but very interesting but anyway the point is artificial intelligence is here okay it's been here it's not going anywhere it's it's here just as sure as the calculator or Chromebooks okay and it is our job as Educators to navigate the appropriate uses of artificial intelligence both in the classroom and out of the classroom okay and if we really want to cultivate career Readiness and real world learning experience for students
then we have to develop a practical approach to AI okay now our PD day on Tuesday is dedicated just about entirely to artificial intelligence okay and I do want to thank our artificial intelligence committee and the skips the school Improvement panel at both the high school and the middle school just for helping to guide our pacing and some of our decisions thus far but here are
some of the topics that are are going to be the topics for our workshops on Tuesday first we have just a keynote generally talking about teaching in the world of AI where did AI come from how long has it been around what are some of the myths about AI what can it do what can't it do what should we be careful of and then here are some of the sessions that teachers to choose from rethinking learning in the age of AI introduction to AI for seal and student well-being very appropriate for counselors case managers
AI across stem so that's an advanced class because obviously when we look at our uh our faculty and staff as a whole we have many varying Comfort levels and experience levels with artificial intelligence so we have everybody that's just a complete beginner then we have some people that are intermediate to advance this AI across stem is really designed for computer science stem teachers even our it Department would be going to that
uh what else can AI do prompt engineering prompt engineering is a huge component of really learning artificial intelligence what you put in and the quality of what you put in is going to determine the quality of that output so prompt engineering is is a a very large component of learning artificial intelligence getting creative with AI obviously that's getting talk about uh some of the more creative things that we could do in an art or music class and then of course not so much AI uh
related but we are doing a CPA first aid recertification for during the our last session for all our coaches as well I just wanted to stick that in there so that's what uh next Tuesday will look like for our staff and uh I'm very excited about it other so our art swing many of us have were down there on a tour earlier this year our art swing has uh just gotten a massive upgrade that is now reflective of the curriculum
and relevant work being done in those classes and this is a this is a great example of our facility now really aligning with the broader instructional goals of our arts program okay the culinary arts class in recent years have adopted a much more commercial approach to culinary arts and now we have a kitchen that can facilitate that and a kitchen that a commercial kitchen that can also it has the capability of of catering a lot of our in-house events
which many of you have uh experienced firsthand uh and we also have a new stem room that stem room houses our engineering architecture and Robotics courses and they can Now operate with greater capability accuracy and efficiency and I do want to thank the board for all their support uh and I especially want to thank Melissa ke and tulan Fetti for overseeing those construction projects I know that that's it's a little harrowing but it
got done and they look fantastic and finally I'd like to talk about pictures s AR swing and finally I know that uh Greg ashof at the last board meeting mentioned some of these things but they are uh pretty significant so they're a they weren't mentioning again uh the Mastery Program and and our building th
building thicking classrooms program so our Mastery Program promotes Mastery of fundamental concepts by allowing students to retake certain tests as many times as it takes until they pass it okay sounds like a simple concept but when you apply it to all your classes from grade 7 to 11 it can make a really big difference and that's what we're hoping for and similarly building thinking classrooms is a pedagogical model
that pushes students to arrive at answers without necessarily getting a direct answer from the teacher which sometimes will greatly frustrate students but it is a different pedagogical approach that seems to foster a little bit greater resilience in the classroom so both of these programs are intended not only to raise scores in our math department and our math scores but also to Foster sustain critical thinking skills and resilience
these are just the highlights of course when we're talking about Real World Learning experiences and career Readiness when our supervisors go into classrooms when they conduct observations for the teachers they're they're looking for these okay and that's always the feedback now with these being the district goals what are the practical applications of this learn that's a lot of the feedback that that teachers would be getting in in most classes and I believe that brings
us to Daman chur with Goal number two thank you Mr dberto okay so one of the main objectives of our school has always been and should always be that we can create an environment where all members of our school Community feel feel safe valued and connected with with that then a lot
of other great things can happen in the school so ensuring a positive inclusive inclusive School culture and climate is our district goal number two and I'm just going to touch on a couple of um some of the um activities uh that we we've been working on this year um to achieve that goal so first and foremost we have a a District culture and climate coordinator um that's Lisa Hol our director of guidance she does a fantastic job of working with uh two
culture and climate teams one in each building um the teams that we have are made up of parents students of all grade levels um and staff um along with our school Improvement panels we call them skip teams um together they meet they brainstorm they listen to the voices of our kids and the stakeholders and from there um they'll take that feedback and then they'll get into the building and start you know taking action on whatever uh happens to come up so those
teams have been a tremendous um um resource for us uh to help with uh getting the different activities going in the buildings okay one of our biggest initiatives um right now is our no place for hate program as you know last year was the first year that we ran that program and we did receive a gold star award for it um this year we are you know back at it with the no place for hate program just to kind of give you an outline of how those activities went this year um we did our pledge
signing and we had our kickoff assemblies back in October and the first uh pledge signing activity took place in all of our English classes um we had our second round of in-class lessons and they were in all of our social studies um classes and th those activities were in November and in the Middle School the topic was examining stereotypes and at high school the topic was gossip and rumors and all these topics come come right from the
uh culture and climate committee teams from each building they they hear what the kids are saying they hear from the teachers from the parents and together they develop the activities that they feel are most relevant um to the school um and then our activities get submitted to the ADL and the Anti-Defamation League approves that okay our next round of uh in-class lessons are going to be uh this month and at the middle school they're going
to occur in all of our reading classes and at the high school in all of our math classes and this topic uh will be understanding a a digital footprint basically you know educating our students so they learn about responsible social media use okay and um if you notice too we try to make sure that the um no place for hate activities we we spread it around into different content areas this way we're not always um going into the same classes and um
it also allows teachers from the different content areas uh be you know they get to lead those different lessons Okay I just want to give you these are the banners that the kids made the pledge signing banners the one uh to block the hate do not particip ipate the red and black one those are little hearts all the kids sign the pledge that's in the high school and then the one on the right hand side are cell
phones and um those I can't even see it from here we said love not hate so that those kids all signed um and you know that's the banner that they uh came up with at the middle school and again those were right from the kids they came up with the concept they came up with the design and they um and and that's what's really great about this program is it's all student Le so they they own it it's not us just telling them you know you need to do this or do that so
okay just break down the buildings a little bit um here okay so in the Middle School okay their their big um motto is we care okay collaboration awareness resilience and empathy so a lot of um what goes on in the building kind of revolves around that that weak ha um
that we care acronym okay um assemblies this year big push at the middle school for both seventh and eighth graders a variety of assemblies um a lot of them focused on cyber bullying anti-bullying um character education and um those were um Mikey Fallon Lauren Matt marielo um Sergeant rich and the Mayhem poets was a new one this year they're kind of like a group of um actors they come in and they do some rapping and you
know they get the kids you know kind of motivated and they're funny and they're they they're talented and it's all kind of about anti-bullying um and then the other assembly which was mentioned um today by Mrs hollat was our Holocaust assembly um couple other things facility wise we have our chill room which is for deescalation and calming a lot of kids like to go there um we have our zenen which is another room um kids go there for meditation mindfulness and Silent
reading we have our peer leadership program here it's called we lead at the middle school and um our eighth graders you know they they um kind of get the seventh graders you know oriented to the building and then stay with them for the year and then one of the other things that we did um this came right from the students in the Middle School is that we did an inventory audit and um this year as a result of that we have a Middle School Musical and we have an orts program here and then just a couple
things for the staff uh dress and denim we have uh Wellness days um Mecca and NJ spine they come in and and they'll and they'll do chair massages for the teachers um School Improvement panels again those are the panels where the teachers get to participate and they have a voice and um this year is primarily uh dedicated on the 18th of February uh to to artificial intelligence however we sprinkled a little Wellness component
in there as well um so high school just a couple highlights from the high school couple different clubs that we have and Dr Westervelt and this was started by Mr C Mr dberto the Multicultural Club and a big initiative to get student voice um in the building I know Dr Westervelt does um meet with our kids all the time and anytime
something does come up um you know they try to resolve it with the kids and see if they can come to some kind of um agreement um they might not always agree but they usually are able to come to some some type of consensus um we did have the Holocaust assembly this year at the high school for 9th and 11th graders uh the administ Traders do a big assembly with all uh all the grade levels on the second day of school where um each grade level has their own assembly with the administration and the administration really does a great job
of um outlining what the expectations are for a high school student um we had the electives course Fair this year where the eighth graders went down to the high school and got to go around and see all the electives that they can take in nth grade we had the a winter Wellness Fair run by the guidance Department it was kind of like exhale before the holiday break and uh Mrs Hol put together a whole thing where they had um
different activities you know snacks snow cone machines different things going on throughout the building um we also brought therapy dogs in during midterms this year and that was a huge um hit in the um high school and I know that Dr dun leevy is looking at perhaps piloting a therapy dog program here in the middle school at some point this year I've never seen kids go so crazy for dogs it was like every everybody was coming to that room to see the dogs um and
then we have a very successful peer leadership program at the high school as well and then just some of the staff um similar to what we're doing in the Middle School dress in denim where the teachers will wear denim and will donate money to a cause um Wellness days um again our two major um vendors that come in are Mecca and New Jersey spine the skip panels and then again on the 18th a wellness component
at our um PD day and then uh for the second year in a row the high school is running a night of knowledge which is a community event scheduled for March 5th so stay tuned um for that information that'll come out from the high school principal and on the topic of um staff Wellness not that this is healthy but um I just want to give a shout out to some of our local vendors for
donating lunch uh on February 18th we have about 60 pizzas being donated to the teachers and um our two assistant principles Jeff um Martin and Amanda went out um to the you know to our local um vendors from Fairfield and um they'll be donating pizza so thank you to Boardwalk Pizza IL Panino delizio Jen Carelli from Pinebrook zest is donating pastries as well as well as the canoli shop in Fairfield is donating pastries
so anytime free food is available for teachers you can make them make them very happy so I want to thank our community uh vendors for donating to the school and that's our report for tonight any comments
from board members okay I just want to note before we go forward just a few things um I was just uh reading one of the one of the uh notices and I know that it's out on the website but just so the board members know and and other people tomorrow is uh support the maskers at the clove relief so if you can go there and just mention the maskers they get a percentage going back
to them on the 12th is Chipotle and that give the kids the world um that's from 4 to8 and if you go and mention they'll also give a percentage on um the 13th it's crispy cream at the high school so that's great for all of you and there's a variety of Valentine Day specials and events going on for the kids to take care uh during the this week so it's all just great things to kind
of you know get all in gear have a great three-day weekend and um just to enjoy it a little bit better so with that being said uh Jonathan you have a finance committee report for us I do yes the finance committee met on February 3rd in the evening we were here about 2 and 1 half to 3 hours all members of the committee were present um it was our first meeting of the year so obviously everything is very preliminary um and has a lot of potential to change um we're facing
some potential increases for next year in mandatory cost such as benefits and things like that um but obviously we will work hard to make it work in a phisically responsible manner thank you appreciate it um at this time we'll open the floor to public comments on agenda items only Mr dberto you could be there and wear many hats you know um thank you to Mr deberg and Mr Machi for your presentation we appreciate
it that being said let's go on to finance motions Jonathan please the following Finance motion made recommendation of superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda items 1 through four we voted upon a one motion and I so move any questions concerns board members Miss Amo yes Miss chrisal yes Miss C Giovani yes Miss holl yes Mr Sher yes Mr Sone
yes Mr to yes M Miss wtz yes Miss C yes Alicia building and grounds please the following building and grounds motions are made at the recommendation of the superintend of school anything plac on this agenda item v in one motion motion
second any questions Miss yes Miss chrisal yes Miss Steve Giovani yes Miss tomat yes Mr Sher yes Mr stamp clone yes Mr Toad yes Miss wajood yes Miss Cal yes John person please the following Personnel motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent schools anything place on this agenda items 1 through 22 will be voted upon in one motion
I so second questions Miss Amal yes Miss crisal yes Miss covani yes Miss hollat yes Mr Sher yes Mr Samone uh yes on items one and two I recuse myself on number three and yes 4 through 22 okay Mr to yes
Miss wwiz yes Miss Cal yes de curriculum please the following curriculum special education motions are made the recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda items 1 through six will be voted upon in one motion and I Mo question Miss Amil yes Miss Chrystal yes Miss deani yes Miss hollat
yes Mr Sher yes Mr samen refus myself number one and two and yes three 3 through six okay Mr T yes Miss W yes Miss Cal yes um Ruth miscellaneous please the following miscellaneous motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda items 1 through three will be voted
upon in one motion nice and move second questions Miss am yes Miss crisal yes missani yes Miss H yes Mr Sher yes Mr Sone yes Mr to yes Miss W yes M
Cal yes okay at this time open for the public for comments on non-agenda items Cesar the poor Vic tonight okay actually Caesar um Mary and I um were uh we attended the virtual meeting we thought about you County School Board you want to give it oh okay give it a quick no go ahead oh no there were just um most of the last Thursday
I guess it was was the S6 County School boards meeting it was a virtual meeting but it was all about sustainable New Jersey which I think we are a part of that still right or to certified we were certified in 2020 okay we haven't gotten an an updated certification since then okay I think they said it was good for a couple years and you have to just re you know reapply and do a bunch of different things so yeah we were we were curious if we were still a sustainable New Jersey
school I I I'll look into it I don't know if so that said four years ago now I'm not sure if that certification is still valid but I mean that like you said we wouldn't take that much to get right thank you that I think attended was all about Ai and productive use of AI so I'm particularly excited to hear what's coming down the pipe next week so learn some really
interesting things and it's nice to see even been there you're Yeah Tuesday should be good we're looking forward to it and who was the guy that did the presentation on AI he was fabulous he was amazing for uh so we partnered with ker learning um and they're an organization that specializes in in uh instructional technology uh they're also one of the few actual Google partners that Google
actually partner with um but and and they're sending three trainers so we have we have three coming from to run all those different sessions okay our next board meeting will be March 3rd we wish everyone a Happy Valentine's Day enjoy your long weekend be safe and um hopefully we're not going to have too much snow this week to interfere with our schedule okay with that being said mayor would you read us out
sure there being no further business before this board of education be resolved of this public meeting be adjourned at 8:10 motion to adjourn