##VIDEO ID:TUcr6SkaOqU## okay excellent okay you can all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance please I Al to flag States Melissa you call the RO please misso miss chis Miss miss here Mr miss Mr sh here Mr Sam here miss W here okay notice of the November 6 2023 meeting of the Board of Education was emailed to the clerks of the burs of Ells northwell and rosand and to the township of Fairfield and the editor of the progress on January 5th 2024 and the Star Ledger on the same day good evening everyone um I'm sure everyone knows that today Veterans Day so I just want to um acknowledge our veterans today and um thank them for their service um I know we've had some alumni that have gone into the military so we just want to thank everyone who has served our country that's first and foremost um I want to officially welcome Emily to the board um looking forward to working with you we all are um I want to thank the Z family for making a donation to The program at the school and donations on our agenda tonight and I also want to thank Andrew tromino she's leaving the district she is the um principal secretary she's been here for about 10 years um you know if you ever going into the main office you see her there and um she's leading to go to other things so we just want to wish her the best in the future and that's all I know okay so um I'm going to be repe a few things that uh Mary mentioned yes today is Veterans Day so I'd like to take a moment to honor and recognize those who have served and continued to serve our country these courageous individuals have put themselves In Harm's Way and have dedicated their lives to protecting our nation today and every day we truly appreciate our veterans and military personnel for their unwavering commitment and selfless service um I also want to wish uh Andrea tromino um best of luck luck after 10 years of dedicated service to the district um I had the opportunity to work closely with Andrea while I worked in a high school and I know how valuable she is to the to the school um especially with her coordination of all of the intricate parts of high school graduation so um we wish Andrea the best of luck um she's a Community member so I'm sure we'll see her around um I also want to welcome uh Emily to uh the board um I know that we are very excited to work with Emily um as as the student board rep um we've already um had our first meeting and um we are going to be coordinating some different events in the building specifically uh we talked about um lunch chats where we're going to meet with students at the high school during lunch and we'll be able to lure them there with some free food so um and then we'll hear right from the students just like we're meeting what I'm having the coffee chats with parents we're going to do some lunch chats with kids so we can hear what the kids are um you know what's on their mind so I look forward to doing that um speaking of coffee chats I had um a coffee chat on Monday October 28th we had three parents from North cwell one from rosand and one from mxfs it was a very um productive meeting parents seem very pleased with how the school year is going so far um Mr dberto also attended the coffee chat uh what I what I plan on doing is every month inviting a different administrator to join so um next month it'll be another administrator and every month uh that we we do it after that I'll have a new guest with me um some topics that we talked about were school start times lockdown procedures extra help opportunities and trans transitioning from 8th grade to 9th grade um our second no place for hate lesson will occur between uh November 20th and November 27th and these um lessons will um take place in all Social Studies classes so information will go out next week um to parents um just informing them that we are doing our second round of lessons for our a for our no place for hate program and there'll be lessons in both the high school and the middle school and other than that we are officially 25% through the first uh through the 24 25 school year marking period two is underway and 12 days of school until Thanksgiving recess no that's okay that's good thank you thank you Emily um principal reports moving quick tonight I'm playing around all right good evening everyone it's hard to believe it's November this weather doesn't feel like it right okay so we had a really fun October we had a lot of activities so just a couple to kind of go over and highlight we had our Halloween wathon you may recall student council and our PE Department always joined together each year they encourage the kids to wear costumes and they raise money uh for breast cancer research and this year they raised $1300 for the breast cancer research foundation so we're really proud of that other events that we had we had our annual cookie with a cop event so we have members of our four sending police departments sxfs Fairfield Field North cwell and rosand they come together the kids swarmed them as soon as they saw I think because now they know what the event is so they were super excited to have them in the building especially if they knew them from you know the elementary school so you can see we have some great pictures there and chief Str off up in the up in the corner so that was a fun event we had our annual pep rally our fall pep rally thanks to some help from the high school marching band and their cheerleaders our student council hosted an exciting fall pep rally the eighth graders finally beat the seventh graders in the in the tug of war um and luckily the faculty regained our title because we lost last year so uh we got that back so Mrs summer and Mrs Bramhall we thank them for coordinating the events um so you can see the marching Bandon cheerleaders in that picture you can see some of the Student Activities um they try and coordinate so the students sign up ahead of time so that they can select different students to participate and everyone can have an equal opportunity but sometimes the kids just kind of like to hang out with their friends too and that's that's fine as well and we have some exciting athletic news um please join me in congratulating the Middle School field hockey team on winning their 12th championship in a row after emerging Victorious from this year's tournament finals three to2 this Victory came after an impressive 13-0 season where the Middle School Knights outscore their opponents 89 to4 four congrats to coach Capello in the entire program so that's a really great picture we also want to congratulate the Middle School girls soccer team who beat roxburry in penalty kicks four to2 to win the greater mors County Title roxburg jumped out to an early lead the team stayed deadlock in overtime and West Essex prevailed in penalties West Essex won three road playoff games to capture the title this season beating Dover Mount Olive and Roxberry so congrats to coach Lara the entire team and to all of our fall sports for a wonderful season and then finally we have our annual dot uh Bobby Illinois dodgeball tournament coming up that's always the half day that Wednesday before Thanksgiving that's really exciting and Bobby Illinois comes every year for the end for the final kind of um Championship round if you will which is always really nice for everyone that worked with him to see him back in the building he looks great he's in such great shape um you know it's kind of inspiring um and then we're also going to have our annual toy drive beginning uh November 18th so that's it from the Middle School Dr West you're up good evening good evening okay so I know that later um in the year we will acknowledge and honor our shopr stars but I do just want to shout out the five seniors who were awarded the shoppr stars for first marking period so Isabella Sun Sophia Cisco Natalie Smith Carl shrim and I and Tressa have been just doing an amazing job in life and so we did honor and recognize them this first marketing period for culture and climate our culture and climate update this year um I had mentioned at the last board meeting that we had our Battle of the classes at the end of October um and we were excited the seniors were victorious this year um definitely have bragging rights for the remainder of the year because of that Victory um and the students were asked so the students were asked to um vote on the new mascot's name the names came from our culture and climate committee so the culture and climate committee came up with three names that they thought were good options we put the vote out to the student body and our winner and our new mascot name is Victory KN which we thought was really cool um and we are as Mr maosi had said earlier the no place for hate we're doing our first lesson in our social studies class class the week of November 20th the lesson for the students is on rumors and gossip and we think this is one that will really you know a lot of discussion it will form a lot of discuss Foster a lot of discussion and hopefully uh some of those rumors and gossip that go around in high school we'll we'll start to die down a little bit from that um and each month I do like to highlight and acknowledge um a department from the school so in the month of November I would like to give a huge shout out to our Amazing World Language Department run by Miss Laura Drago um they these teachers are dedicated to fostering Global awareness and cultural understanding among our students through engaging lessons and creative activities in Spanish Italian French and Chinese they help our students develop valuable language skills that will serve them well in today's interconnected world it's also important to note that every year we Inc significantly increase the number number of students who passed the Seal of biliteracy assessment which is a huge accomplishment um and that's in part dedication to our teachers and to the students that we have here at West Essex um so we thank them for their hard work and their passion and that concludes my portion for the evening thank you okay before we move on to committees I think Daman you wanted to mention something else yes I wanted to mention that we were we will likely be meeting um next month at the high school in the auditorium that's typically the meeting where we recognize um students so a bigger facility where we can recognize students from the first half of the year on top of that we are most likely going to be able to give you guys a tour of the new culinary arts room and the new stem classroom so um we're very excited about that and um we I will definitely conf you get closer to the date but it looks really good that we going to get a tour of the culinary and stem oh nice all right that'll be exciting everyone heard that right um do we have any comments or anything from board members alici anyone else com excellent very nice good anyone else does anybody have any committee reports um we'll move on to public comment at this time we'll open the floor for public comments on agenda items none we'll move on um to finance R do you want to take Finance sure uh the following Finance motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda items one through eight will be voted upon in one motion and I so Mo second are there any questions or comments Miss Miss Cristal yes missani yes Miss Hans yes Miss calone yes Mr Sher yes Mr s yes Miss yes Beth would you like to take build are there any questions or comments Miss Miss chis Miss yes Miss yes M Mr sh yes Mr s yes M yes Jonathan do you want to take Personnel please sure following Personnel motions are made to the recommendation of the superintend of anything placed on this agenda items 1 15 we voted upon one motion and I questions or comments Miss yes Miss chrisal yes missani yes Miss H yes Miss C Mr yes Mr Sam yes Miss yes lla would you take a curriculum please are there any questions or comments Miss yes Miss CIS yes M Mr yes Mr yes M yes do you want to take miscellaneous please miscellane super ofs any questions or comments m yes Miss chal Miss yes Miss yes Miss yes M yes Mr Sam yes M yes it's not on here but we're g to open up the floor oh wait I'm sorry I missed it thank you we'll open up the floor for public comments on non-agenda items Noe okay um de do you want to call us out yes Happy Thanksgiving everyone