##VIDEO ID:BXM0uWjSZVo## [Music] e e or one of these other assessments they can also submit a portfolio for review as another pathway for graduation however um in our district we last year um we only had one student who required a student portfolio so most of our students are able to meet the graduation requirements utilizing one of the pathways either njpa or one of the other assessments we had much success last year with acup Placer as um one of the assessments that we use for the first time as a district and we were a we narrowed down and did not need to require many student portfolios so that was um something new for us as a district last year now we'll have the opportunity to take a look at the New Jersey graduation proficiency assessment or NJ GPA and how our students perform on this assessment so in order to be graduation ready um this assessment uh students need to perform at level two or greater than um 725 for both language arts um and also for mathematics the language arts assessment takes a look at skills um for students in their 10th grade year and the mathematics portion um takes a look at Algebra 1 and geometry standards for students and so here um on this slide you can see student achievement in terms of our average scale scores and performance levels for both English language arts and Mathematics uh within w and this Compares us to all of New Jersey um as well as you can see as a district um 97% of our students in English language arts were met the graduation requirements and in mathematics 93% of our students met the graduation uh requirements in comparison to the state which for English language arts was only 82% of students and for mathematics was 55% [Music] see the same information we saw on the other slide um as a visual representation um and you can see that in the average uh scale scores and performance and it just Compares our performance against how students at the state level it's also important when we're looking at data not only to consider how we do um as a district and how we perform overall but it's also important to take a look at um how does this look in terms of our demographic data so how do groups of students perform as well and so um we're going to take a look at that in a second but I also wanted to share when we do that um we also should look at our district demra trffic information and so the information that I'll share now um comes from our October 15th submission for last year so 2324 School District year so here based on our October 15th submission um our overall population of students um this is our demographic data based on race and ethnicity overall for the district so just keep this data in mind as we look at our demographic data for all of the different assessments okay so this is the breakdown of our demographic data by R ethnicity here you can see the breakdown of our demographic data for groups of students um by different programs that students may be um involved in so here you can see um our students that participate in the program of free lunch um students receiving support through Section 504 which is through the Disabilities Act students receiving support in special education our multilingual Learners are elll uh formerly known as elll students or English language Learners and students receiving support through special education in comparison to our general education population or students not receiving support through one of these programs um um and just um as a comparison a students receiving support through a 504 plan are students in the general education setting that have accommodations in a general education classroom um they typically have a disability that has been um identified but they are in a general education classroom and receive support through a 504 plan for with accommodations and the difference with students um with receiving support in special education these students need specialized instruction in order to be able to meet their needs through the curricula and they have individual um education plans or IEPs to support them also keep in mind in terms of our demographic data for last year uh at the October 15th submission this is um our demographic data by gender which is our female and male student populations or students that identify as that okay so now taking a look at our njpa uh results in terms of our demographic data here's our achievement levels for all subjects combined so math and English language arts uh combined and this is how our students performed um in terms of being graduation ready so also um as a reminder just thinking about how State uh performance was um and in combination students were 68% of students were graduation ready at the state level and here you can see how our students performed in terms of race and ethnicity on this slide you can see our student performance uh for NJ GPA in terms of program so our students on pre lunch um students receiving support through Section 504 our multiable Learners uh special education and then our general education students so what does all of this mean um reflecting on our demographic data you know it's important to do that and what it suggests is that as a district we are performing very well overall but it also means that you know we have to continue to do our work through our strategic goals um to make sure that we are capitalizing on student strengths and areas of growth and that we are putting in place um individual um supports and interventions for students to ensure that all of our students are growing and reaching their uh fullest potential and later in our presentation I will talk about some specific programming that we utilize um through our multi-tiered systems of support in order to support all of our Learners um in their GR now we will move on to our next assessment um our New Jersey learning assessment our njsla this is another required assessment for all of our students um and it is an assessment that measures Prof proficiency on the New Jersey learning standards for English language arts math and science so taking a look at our English language arts um for students and performance for English Language Arts students are assessed um in English language arts in grades 3 through 9th grade and it takes a look at um their performance around the standards in looking at their reading um their ability to synthesize ideas across text their ability to determine meanings of words and vocabulary and also their ability to write um and use information from their reading to anal on multiple sources of test in order to meet proficiencies uh students need to score at levels four which is meet expectations or met expectations and or Andor level five which is exceeding your expectations those are the two passing levels uh for both English language arts and for mathematics and students are scored on a scale of one through five on this chart um you can see here how are students performed in grades 3 through n for the last uh three years the data shows information about the same grade so looking across you can see all students in third grade right um at each of the levels and um but this is different cohorts of students so it's important to think about that because it's really difficult to compare progress directly because there are different cohorts of students that we're looking at so that's like comparing three different people who took the same assessment right um and so when we look at the same grade but different cohorts of students we as an administrative team when we're looking at that we're looking for patterns and Trends and we use this information to think about our curricular decisions our program decisions um and we're looking for what patterns are we noticing or what are we seeing especially if we're seeing any patterns around um anything that's decreasing so I wanted to just point out one example um so if you look at eighth grade specifically and we take a look at you know meeting expectations and exceeding expectations combined so if you look at 8th grade in 2022 and 2023 and you combine meeting expectations and exceeding expectations you end up with about 86% proficiency so stayed relatively the same there and then in 2024 there was a decrease um in performance in terms of meeting and exceeding expectations and so as a team we need to take a look at that and we need to think about you know are there curricular revisions that need to be made or there programmatic revisions that we need to make as a team as a result of of a decrease are there are trends that we're noticing in our data because remember these are different cohorts of students different students are taking the assessment but they're taking them all in the same year right so we're looking at our curriculum there um and we did make some revisions this summer we actually revised all of the English language arts um Middle School curricula we actually revised all of the case through 12 curricula to update the standards over the summer and we are now providing um exensive ongoing professional development for our teachers um to support all of the changes that we've implemented we also noticed in Trends uh K through 5 and we noticed that we needed to also support there and we've made some changes in our literacy um implementation of our programs at the K5 level as well and we've implemented Orton Gillingham training for our teachers K through two right now we're working on a M year plan um to train our teachers in phonics Andy awareness and morphology which is the study of parts of words and we're implementing that as well of noticing some of those tracks this slide which is a little bit difficult to see but the the presentation will be posted online as well so people can go on there and see it more clearly um on this slide you can see different same grade different cohorts for the last five years and here you can also see the trends right so it's important to look at these Trends and how are our students trending in terms of their performance um and you can see here too you know we're looking for patterns you know what are some of the impacts that we might be if we're trending in terms of decreasing in performance you know we may think about um our students are still being impacted by Co and some of the impacts of that lack of Education in terms of being in in person and how that may have impacted their performance we also know there's a lot more research in terms of literacy and the need for more foundational skills especially at the Early Elementary and that's why the standards have been updated uh more recently and we've done a whole revision of our curriculum to meet those standards and so we will continue to track those Trends and patterns and see if there are shifts that we need to make in terms of our curriculum so we are well aware and definitely um making changes as a result of the patterns that we're noticing I also wanted to let me go back um we also wanted to take a look at the English language arts uh performance with the same students but consecutive years so this shows us a different piece of information for njsla performance so this shows two years in a grow um and it's important to look at this because this shows us a cohort of students right so the same students who were with us for two years in a row and took the assessment two years in a row were called the cohort group so non-cohort groups would be students who took the assessment one year but they were not with us for two years in a row so what we're noticing here is so if you look at for example um the sixth grade to seventh grade Co cour cluster their performance in sixth grade with 78% of them scored needing or exceeding expectations and then in seventh grade that same group tested again and 81% of them were meeting or exceeding so really noticing here what you see overall is that cohort wise when students are with us for multiple years they are making growth and progress okay so it's telling us that our student students are growing when they're with us for multiple years so it's important to also see that narrative right so yes um there are you know there's there's data that we need to look at when our students are same grade same uh grade different students and then also here different grades same students and the cohort and what happens there and what we're noticing is that students are making growth when they are with us for m and then it's also um good to take a look at what happens in comparison to the state how are students performing in comparison to other students in the state of New Jersey and so taking a look at meeting expectations on this slide and then exceeding expectations on the next slide and what you'll notice is for English language arts um at all levels grades 3 through n our students are outperforming um students in the state of New Jersey and they are exceeding um performance of the state of New Jersey in terms of both meeting and exceeding expectations at all levels great for that on this slide um you can see our student performance disaggregated by demographics um taking a look at race and ethnicity on njsla for English language arts um as a comparison remember 50% of students across the state received a level four or five for English language arts okay so just keep that in mind as you're taking a look at this slide um so the demographic data here you know demonstrates similar to what we talked about before which with NJ GPA which was that you know Although our students overall are performing really well you know it does show here that you know we need to also continue to do work through our strategic goals especially our Equity goal and that we need to recognize um you know students cultural references and also um make sure that we're including as as many of our culturally responsive teaching strategies in the classroom so that all of our students continue to grow at the level that we want them to so that's what this um information shows here the demographic data on this slide um shows students on free um lunch Section 504 are multilingual Learners um special education in comparison to the performance of our students in general education um and again um it's important to note here well you know that our students um need some interventions and individualized plans in some instances in order to continue to make that desired gr that we want to see we'll talk a little bit more about that very very shortly and here you can see the njsla um data specifically for English language arts in terms of gender performance now we're going to switch gears to mathematics so taking a look at our student performance in mathematics um so our students in mathematics are assessed in grades 3 through eight Algebra 1 Algebra 2 and geometry um and again it's measuring our student performance in terms of their ability to acquire the New Jersey uh learning standards for Matha which all of our curricula are written to the levels of proficiency are the same so students are measured levels one through five with um levels four and five being meeting expectations and exceeding expectations so math gets a little bit more complicated when we get into the middle school um because our students students have multiple paths so when we're looking at our Middle School which I'll show the chart in a second but when we're looking at our middle school performance it's important to also keep in mind that you know when we're looking at sixth grade performance or when we're looking at grade eight performance kids have very many different paths right so it's not pure like when we look at third grade performance it's all of our third graders but when we're looking at seventh grade for example right we're looking at um seventh grade for instance 38% of our students in seventh grade are in algebra one h& okay so it's not a pure everyone in that grade is taking the same assessment so just keep that in mind when you're looking at the results um another example even in in sixth grade our pre-algebra h& so students we have you know 30 6% of our students in that course right so kids are not all taking the same assessments once they get into middle school so keep this chart sort of in mind so this slide shows our njsla mathematics proficiency scores for students in grades 3 through N9 uh for the last three years similar to the one that we saw for um English language arts and as I mentioned before you know students have multiple paths in middle school so for instance if you look at you know our performance in grade eight right and you look all the way across um that's really only representative of 78 total students because in grade 8 we have students in Algebra 1 we have students in Algebra 2 right we have kids in m multiple different paths okay so um our students overall you know we we take a look at the same type of information when we're looking at our math performance we look at Trends across um and we take a look at you know are there adjustments that need to be made based on the trends that we're seeing um are there curricular adjustments that need to be made and those get revised um through a period you know every 3 years we make revisions um to curricula or as needed every summer we take a look and there were also revisions made to all of our math curricular uh documents as well over the summer so there were adjustments that were made um to our mathematics ccul here you can see our proficiency for students in grades 3 through n for the last five years the other thing I wanted to mention too that's important to note for math is that we've also made significant programmatic changes in math right and we have more students in higher level math courses earlier on so for instance when we're looking at Algebra 1 scores at the high school level for instance right most other districts most students are in Algebra 1 in high school our students take algebra one mostly in middle school we have very few students at the high school level that's really reserved for new students and for students who were in math 8 which I told you before was like 78 students right so mostly other high schools when we compare our results to other high schools it's difficult to do that because most of our kids are taking algebra one and middle school okay so just remember that you know our path um for math are students are taking higher level courses and they're achieving it really well and making progress um with that in in younger grades and we've opened access to students taking higher level courses with a number of our students being in honors and accelerated now as I mentioned there are six grade cre we have 38% on this slide um I wanted to show the same thing I showed earlier for English language arts this is same students in consecutive grades who took the njsla for two years in a row taking the next class like the next course in sequence right so if they were in math Six they took math seven or if they were in um Algebra 1 they took Algebra 2 and what their performance um was in the next course in the sequence and again here you can see that when students are with us for multiple years and that was the co those are the cohort students um and as you can see when students are with us for consecutive years they are growing um as well for both math and English Langs this slide on the next slide shows our meeting expectations and exceeding expectations in comparison to the state um this these charts are a little tricky to look at in comparison to the state because of what I mentioned to you earlier which is the fact that when we compare our performance against the state you have to recognize that our number of students enrolled in some of these courses is significantly different than what the number is for the state so algebra one is a really good example of that right because most of the students in Algebra 1 at our high school level um at the state in comparison to how many we have enrolled at the high school there's just no comparison most students at the high school at the state level are in algebra one and most of our students in algebra one are in middle school right so we're not really comparing apples tles it's a it's a different type of comparison so that's something to do as with our NJ um Ela data we should also um take a look at our demographic data for mathematics so the green um bars represent meeing and exceeding expectations you know and I think that um looking at this the first slide shows our performance in mathematics comparing race and ethnicity um and just like with our njsla um Ela data I think that our mathematics data also would suggest um continued need for work with you know supporting students with interventions um and individualize support for students training for teachers and ensuring that we have Equitable access to advance programming for all of our Learners and we certainly have done a lot of that as a district um which we'll talk about here you can see uh performance and njsla Mathematics by program so students on um free lunch Section 504 multilingual Learners uh special education then in comparison to general education and um finally our njsla mathematics um performance comparing students by gender now we will move on to taking a look at our student performance um njsla for science students take science and jsla uh which measures science and engineering practices they take it in grades uh five 8 and 11 and the proficiency levels um the state likes to confuse us so rather than five levels um they changed it to four for science um so we have levels one through four for Science and levels um three and four are the levels that we fire to so taking a look here we have um our performance so in grades 5 8 and 11 so this year specifically um we also want to look at our performance across the state as a point of reference um and across the state there was a significant decline in science performance and that was something that uh was very much talked about at the state level you know and and they're inquiring about and conversations around the science supervisors why was there such a decline um we here really only saw that in fifth grade which makes sense our fifth grade cohort is the cohort that was in kindergarten during Co and we see a trend in some of their performance across other content areas as well um math um literacy you know we a need for more intervention in that grade level so you know science it's also the first time they're taking an assessment like this for science right so that's something to note um but we did see that across the state there was a decline in performance um as it relates to science however when you look at the advanced the proficient and advanced proficient um in comparison for the last four years our performance has stayed pretty much the same with the slight decline um in performance remember we're comparing same grade different cohorts of students right so it's not the same cohort which means it's like four different people taking the test um but still looking at the trends we relatively the same with really just that fifth grade crew this year being the outlier group and we'll keep an eye on that and you know if that seems to be a trend then that's something that we definitely need to yeah if it's an outlier that continues to be um a pattern for us moving forward and here's our njsla science uh by race and ethnicity so this gives us information on how our students performed in terms of our demographics there and um this shares with us uh demographics by program similar to njsla for Math and for literacy and all of these slides will be available for community members to access um on the website so I know I'm going a little bit quickly but you will be able to take a look at this um closer at a later time as well and here's the performance by um gender so now moving on to another um assessment that is also required by the state so the dynamic learning map or dlm um dlm is an alternate assessment to njla and this is an assessment that is given to students with disabilities who require a different type of ass assment due to their disability um the assessment is adaptive and the questions are presented to students um on previous responses so it adapts so if they get it wrong you know it becomes easier if they get it right it becomes um more challenging and so students um take this assessment instead of njsla if they have a disability that warns them to take this assessment the assessment is given to students in GR 3 through 11 um and science is GI for English language arts and Mathematics and then science is given similar to njsla in grades 5 8 and 11 and here um are the times that the assessments taken how many um testlets are required for each of them here are the proficiency levels um similar to science there are four levels for dlm for dynamic map and here um is our student performance in regards to mathematics um science and English language arts and then also on the left hand side you can see the number of total students in our district that have taken each of the assessments so in mathematics we had 56 uh students who took this particular assessment in science 23 and um in English language arts 55 okay so those are the number of students who uh required to take the assessments and the data of their performance and finally um access um is an assessment or assessing comprehension and communication in English state to state um is for multilingual learners and this is a state required assessment so even students who decline Services must sit for Access um students are scored on access on six different levels and here they are um and students who receive a proficiency of four and a half um are students that can vent exit um services for um support for mul Learners in our program on this slide I wanted to just share um a little bit about historically our enrollment in multilingual Learners um for our district who are receiving services and supports and this is based off of our October 15th submission for the last three years so in 2223 we had 327 students receiving services um for multilingual Learners um 20 and you can see here uh 2324 350 and then we just submitted our last submission where we had 428 um students receiving services and you can see the increases by school here um and where are students um primarily which schools they are uh located in and as you can see we've had a significant increase in our district of students of multi- Learners in our buiness and here's a distribution of their proficiency levels overall by grade level bands so our K5 students our students um 68 and then our students in 9 through 12 and then overall how they're performing oh my favorite part now I get to talk about how we're supporting all of these students right um as I mentioned earlier we have lots of strategies as a district to support our students and student achievement um not only students in different demographic groups but all of our Learners because we want all of our students to be able to reach their very best and to continue to grow socially emot Ally academically behaviorally so one way that we do that um as a district is we have implemented multi-tiered systems of support which is a system of supports that's proactive um and it's a preventative um framework that helps us to really look at students strengths and to be able to maximize uh their strengths and to think about how we can support them in a number of different ways and um through a multi system of support model we um try to do that proactively by collecting data and identifying students needs um early identification and then through early identification we are able to really think about what interventions are most appropriate for students and where those interventions are necessary um and then to mitigate any gaps in their learning and to be able to support them so that they can make as much progress as possible so last year we piloted uh multi-tiered systems of support in five of our schools and now this year we've implemented it in 10 of our schools and we've seen tremendous growth um in our students and also in our Educators as a result of our process in implementing multi systems of support um so a little bit more detail about that so what does that actually mean um so at a tier one level in multi-tier systems of support that's our Universal way of preventing so what do 80% of our students need to receive you know everyone receives high quality instruction with really great curricula we have that in this District we have really well-trained teachers we have really high quality professional development we have really strong curriculum that's why we have people moving here and they want to be educated here right because we have a strong educational system and if that's the case then around around Approximately 80% of your students should be able to make progress adequately without a need for intervention they will grow and do what they need to do in the classroom through the supports that are already in place um when that's not the case and when um students require additional supports we need to be able to identify them proactively so we Implement some Universal screeners so we utilize things like map um we utilize other assessments that teachers provide in the classroom to identify kids who might need additional supports and then they may receive those supports at a tier two level right um so at a tier two level we are providing students with supports two to three times a week um outside of their classroom for about 20 to 30 minutes uh for each of those and we do that K through 12 it looks a little bit different at the high school but K8 we have um reading and math interventionists at all buildings that provide our students with tier 2 support um outside of the classroom so not during their instructional time when they're receiving math or reading but at a different time okay for a rotational process and then at a tier three support if they need more intensive support so we have about 3 to 5% of our students who might need that level three toer support they are receiving um support four to five times a week for about 20 to 30 minutes same amount of time depending on the student um and they have a specific goal tied to math and reading we are also working on um creating tiered supports forcl as well so not just for academic we also have this for social emotions as well um through our school counselors and through our bcba we have a general education uh bcba or behavior analyst who also helps to support students behaviorally so we have this for academics but we also have it foral as well for students who might need a different level of intervention um and these are some of the ways that we support our Learners um individually more individually through a tiered system of support and then we use a lot of data to be able to measure their growth um we take a look at not only their math scores but we have other assessments that teachers give in the classroom and our interventionists give to make sure that students are growing and that the interventions are working um to track how students are making progress and whether or not we need to adjust something or make changes um to see if students are growing or not or if we need to change something in order for them to grow so overall our multi-tiered system of support is a proactive way for us to meet the needs of all of our Learners to identify um students proactively to provide tiered interventions um in a general education setting and in a pull out setting if students need that and you know here I have some and we do that through our strategic goals as well um training our teachers making sure that they're well equipped to be able to do it in the classroom and you know our Equity goal um this all of this work supports all of our strategic goals but especially our Equity goal that's one gigantic strategy here are some others as I mentioned earlier we've revised and updated all of our English um language arts curricula our mathematics curricula and then we also this year um updated and revised our multilingual learn program um K through five so we used to have a pull out reading replacement program and for students at all levels and now we are utilizing a cushion model for students at levels three and four and we are using um at levels one and two we are um doing replacement literacy through science and social studies but students are back in the classroom for reading so they're getting a double dose of literacy um at levels one and two so we have completely revised the curricula there as well in order to be able to support students differently for our multilingual Learners the other thing that we've done is um really being strategic about our professional development and there's a whole list up there so I'm not going to go through all of it because we will be here forever but I'll highlight two that I think have had really significant impact um one I mentioned earlier which was our Orton Gillingham we're still working through this um for foundational literacy skills so we are working through training all of our teachers p through five um Orton Gillingham is a reading um a reading program that talks about structured literacy and works on foundational literacy skills and really training every classroom teacher paper five the other is our sheltered English observation protocol and we just finished training um close to 100 teers wide um and this is to provide supports for our multilingual Learners across the district Cas as well and it was probably one of the best professional development experiences um I've ever seen and teachers are very well equipped now to be able to support um and differentiate in the classroom on Multi workers so really intensive four days of training teachers received um and then they will have another set of training um in the spring as well with the same trainer so really excited about that leveraging our title grants differently actually on the agenda tonight is one of the ways in which we're supporting students differently through title grants so on um using title 4 grants to support students on free lunch um in dual enrollment so supporting them by being able to provide that opportunity for students to participate in dual enrollment who may not be able to afford to do so so really encouraging to take that opportunity through title funding um and then also Staffing we have a lot of support staff for our for um our teachers and our students to be able to support student achievement and growth we have um teacher research Specialists um that support teachers instructionally and Coach them in their instruction and then we also have a number of interventionists for math and reading p through eight and we two additional teachers to support our multi- as a result of the increased involment that I mentioned earlier there are a lot of other strategies but we that that presentation could be a whole separate presentation so now we'll ship gear I just talked a lot about all of the state required New Jersey assessments um and now we'll shift GE a little bit to talk about um um all of our assessments that are designed by college board so the first of which is our advanced placement or AP assessments um and these are designed to measure uh student preparedness for college and um specifically um advanced placement or AP really takes a look at a course placement and colleges sometimes use it for admissions purposes as well here our advanced placement offerings this year right and they're the same as last year minus the addition of one additional course so we are offering AP African-American studies this year so that was not on our list last year but it is this year um so I wanted to add that and um just share that that is an additional course that we are offering so AP uh scores are weighted on a five point scale and as I mentioned they're designed to measure how well a student has mastered the content and the skill of a specific AP course and here's the waiting so typically three four or five are the scores that we see um you know that we say we want students to either be qualified very well qualified or extremely well qualified so these results show student achievement levels across different departments for um our district scores of 3 four five are typically what colleges and universities um are looking for overall if you look on this chart 90% of our students here across all disciplines have scored 3 four five um there were 3,770 assessments conducted across the two schools some students do take multiple assessments um there was one other assessment conducted and that was an AP research assessment um one student took an AP research um assessment cap this uh visual shows the same information as the previous slide but as a visual representation of how our students scored across the disciplines so I also wanted to show this information in terms of demographic um percentages but before we do that I wanted to also show High School enrollment so here total High School enrollment so not enrollment in the entire District but High School enrollment so looking at um race and ethnicity in our entire place schol okay by race and ethnicity demographic in comparison to enrollment of AP students so keep this in mind when you take a look at uh race and ethnicity in terms of distribution of achievement levels so here you can see student um achievement Levels by rais in ethnicity in terms of how our students perform and I think it's interesting to note that unlike our performances in njla or NJ GPA um you know performance is Rel relatively consistent amongst our students of different races and ethnicities in terms of qualified well qualified and extremely well qualified and here is a performance embarrass by gender and this takes a look at um the distribution by achievement level so this one added an additional category so um these are all categories that are federally um shared uh and this one added gifted so I just wanted to Define that because that isn't something that we had on any of the previous ones um the state requires us to identify any students as gifted and at the high school level all that means is students that are enrolled in H or an AP course are considered gifted at the high school level so if you can see here it's the same as the students the same percentages as the students in in all students or the gened right because if they're in an AP course they're considered gifted so I just wanted to make sure you you have that definition because we talked about the definition for the others before sorry um here you can see this sh chart shows a fiveyear AP score summary for high school north um it shows the percentage of AP students with three or greater in AP exams so 94% of students in 24 enrolled in AP in AP courses SC to three or better here I know it's hard to see it's a little bit blurry but it's 94% and this shows for High School South and for High School South um 93% of students in 2024 enrolled in AP um course scored three or better so overall as a district 93% or better of our student students who took an AP Tas SC to three or above now we will take a look at um our American college test or the acts so the ACT is a standardized test for college admissions um it takes about 2 hours and 55 minutes it's multiple choice um it's scored a little uniquely so the writing score is on a scale of 2 to 12 whereas reading and math is scored on a scale of 1 to 36 just keep that in [Music] mind so on this table you can take a look at um how our students performed and it shows a comparison of the last four years for each of the different categories so the main composite score um it also shows the number of students who took the acts so last year 231 students took it or had a valid score and then it shows the scores across in comparison to previous years so overall our scores have relatively St not any standard deviation differences or significant differences take a look at um Scholastic aptitude test or sat results the SAT is another standardized test for the college admissions it's three hours and multiple choice and students um it measures critical thinking analysis and interpretation English and math and here are our scores for the last five years for averages so if a student took the SAT or the act more than once because I know this is usually a question so I put it up here um the most recent score is summarized okay um the other pieces is we had 682 students who took the SATs in 2024 so that's the total number of students across both high schools so on this chart it Compares our SAT scores uh for 23 and 4 in comparison to New Jersey's scores and then also the total group so the total group is any person anywhere nationally that took the SATs so how do our students perform in comparison to any other individual who's taken the SATs and again it takes their more most recent score if they took it more than one time so as you can see we outperform both the state and the national laws and then this is just interesting to look at um how you know how how many of our students or what percentage of our students take the acts versus the SATs um um so looking at our 11th and 12th graders there are some younger so 10 some 10th graders take it but then they usually take it again right so looking at our 11th and 12th graders about 15% of them take the acts and about 44% of them take the SATs so here's here's the comparison in terms of the numbers and last year we had as I mentioned 231 students who took the acts and 682 who took the so thank you for your time this evening um I know that this was a lot of information so I appreciate you staying tuned um and everything that we do here you know is for our students um and really to ensure that we're empowering all of our Learners to to be able to contribute um to this diverse and changing world that we have and we really want to ensure that all of our kids are growing um and we put in place lots of supports for them to be able to do so and so you know I I welcome questions from the board and um feedback and really to hear your thoughts about um the presentation and anything that you're thinking about thanks Dr gold so anyone go ahead Lisa hi turn myself on hello um first off thank you very much for the level of detail it's a lot but we appreciate the detail um secondly it's for those of us who were around when we did the whole honors and math revision it's really nice to see that you said 36 to 38% of our middle school students are in the honors program and that's a huge number uh compared to what the program used to be and looking at the testing results it's clear that they are doing well in that more challenging environment my question for you is when you look through all the numbers and there are so many um are you do you see in here that we're still carrying a covid legacy in our students it's a really good question um I think yes especially in some Pockets um I think that we have some work to do specifically with our middle school students um um specifically with language arts I think that there's some work that we need to do there um there are some places where they miss some essential skills fourth and fifth grade as well teachers are also sharing that information with us um we're seeing that in their writing okay so those are some of the areas where it's where it's coming up uh where they miss some of the foundational skills that they would have had earlier on um I think students are also still acquiring some of the social emotional skills that they missed while they were not with us but we're working really hard to implement strategy is to be able to support them and it's a multifaceted approach as I mentioned you know not only and I didn't get a chance to talk about on the one slide where uh I was sharing about mtsf strategies but also professional de development I didn't have a chance to talk about all of the professional development that's happening with fcl through our nurtured heart approach um also our counselors um have implemented a new curricula for a second step which we were discussing today and now we have a consistent pay through eight um School counseling curricula where uh school counselors are pushing into the classroom with a consistent messaging for our students and they're hearing the same skill so I I think all of those things will definitely help and you know as I also mentioned we've significantly changed and revised some of our Middle School language arts curriculum and we're doing lots of professional development this year to support teachers in that implementation great question um who's next go ahead Liz Dr girl that was a amazing presentation and incredible amount of information that we still need time time to digest everything um just a couple of questions just wanted to confirm so in uh 2019 2020 we did not administer the njsla across the state right that was not done okay um in terms of like slide I guess is 53 about the enrollment of multilingual Learners by year so there's a significant amount of students at High School South versus North so what types of supports are we giving to those students especially in the school years when it's so important for graduation of you know for college preparation sure so our program for multilingual Learners is house at South um and then we only have a few students at north um there's special education students who have programming at North that need to be there and then they're receiving also supports for multilingual they're also multilingual Learners receiving specialized programming for special education so they need both so that's why there are a few students at North but most of them are at South um so we have three teachers at South that support our students in terms of um their supports from for multilingual Learners they we have pushin supports uh where they go into their classrooms in mathematics um in world history um and also in science and biology uh to be able to support them through a pushin model and then we also have pullout um Services as well for students um through like a like a study skills type course that they take at the high school level so it depends on their program because their are course requirements for completion for them to be able to graduate so it depends on what they need and um what courses we need to offer in order for them to graduate but we have three full-time staff members at High School South that support all of our multile workers I just had one other question about the aps or comment so it was really um great to see the scores for the aps about three and above and just um how well prepared our school district is for the the kids at that level to get that level of scores in comparison and the number of students who take the assessments we're we're running out of room we may have to rent out a facility or something I don't know oh boy thanks it's a real conversation thanks Liz uh this side Dana hi I want to thank you so much for this report it was very comprehensive and appreciate it and I wanted to also reiterate what Louisa said I'm glad to see you know so many years later being able to look at how the hna program manifests itself and how well the students how many more students are able to take that level course and um how well they're doing in it so um I had another um question about a different program um the what percentage of the Dual language emergence students are in h& and how is that how are they doing that's a really good question I don't know the exact percentage but what I can share with you is that it is close to the same or better okay well that's yeah go because some of us were here when that was first started we were we were a little that was not the case right right um but I can definitely dispel that that is the case so we have 36% of our um sixth graders who are in the program total what I can share with you is that the percentage is close to the same or better okay good that's what we were hoping okay as we're hoping and then I would say the same is true for our science performance because that's another question that typically comes up um that are our our students performing on njsla in fifth grade because they take the course in mandre right or in Spanish and science um and they are also performing on njsla the same or better in both Spanish and in Mandarin okay bar just to jump in um for the audience uh DLI our dual language immersion program right it's our K through now sixth grade program for students that have and families that have opted in to um study either Mandarin or Spanish starting in Kinder Garden then they stay through the cohort going up as that cohort has now entered Middle School there comes the h& question that's the honors and accelerated mathematics program and just to see if those students that are receiving content in Mandarin or content in Spanish how well they fared on state assessments and other entry criteria as they then have moved into sixth grade so because this because they um receive instruction both in math and in science in the target language so either in Spanish or Mandarin so the question was would they you know would they have the same representation in our honors and accelerated programming and the answer is yes and would they um score as well in science in on njsla and the answer is yes so that's great news um and then I was um interested in the um something you mentioned about um in tier 2 and tier three um the seal supports I don't know if you can elaborate a little bit on that sure so um that is definitely something that we're still working on but um I'll talk about let me talk about behavioral because typically we talk about um how school counselors May support students in small groups right so we do have small groups that counselors support students in in a tier two um some families have experienced that in the past where they may be invited to a particular group around a particular theme or topic and that group might go on for 6 to8 weeks um and students meet to discuss whether it be you know conflict resolution or um skills around emotional regulation or um skills around you know whatever the need might be um and families can opt in U because they're invited for that right uh a student might show a need in that area and then a family can their child into to participate in that um anxiety is another example of that and we have that support for students K through 12 um so that might be an example of a tier 2 support for a student in ancl realm um behaviorally we also have at the K5 level we have um a general education um Behavioral Analyst who works with our teachers and also works with individual students to uh do observation and then create individual plans for kids and helps to coach the teacher into implementing that plan in the classroom so the kid is still in a general education classroom but may have an individualized plan to help them with whatever the behavior is that might need to be um supported okay thank you so much sure thanks Dana um L thank you so much Dr gold that was the second time I got to hear that presentation and just from the first to second the amount of detail and also just um the breath of the slides and numbers I it's very appreciated um just with the multilingual Learners because there's such um a big increase almost hundred students in terms of like Staffing and like Logistics is that um are there enough um folks to meet the needs of students who are coming in as U multilingual Learners that's the first question that's an interesting question um I mean are there enough there are never enough staff members right like more staff members um you know we right now our focus is been at the elementary level um because that's where we're seeing the greatest need currently um for our students and also because our programming has shifted and we're supporting students differently at the elementary level so that's where we have increased our staffing and put the supports in place um so right now that's where where we sort of targeted our supports we're keeping in mind that if we have additional increases we may there seems to be a trend yep there seems to be a trend and an increase uh but on but we've received those additional two staff members within the last year so it's been very very helpful to have more staff so that we can support adequately and we can provide students with both push in and pull out because that's the ideal you want to have students in a level three and four in a push in setting so that they are they have other language models for them and they're in the classroom in an inclusive setting as much as possible and then just another question related to Louis what Louisa mentioned actually um when that discussion with h& uh came up years ago I was actually on the other side and um came up to the public comment saying why the change you know but I'm so glad to be wrong and that I'm surprised to the 38 36% more access for students to be in these high level math classes that can that can take it so um thank you for that information that I'm glad to see that um the second thing was just with the covid um I like the way you phrased it um Louisa with the covid uh Legacy yeah um and I think we've had this discussion I'm just curious with looking at like slide 19 where you can see the grades um from year to year grade three it is I know I understand that it's um same grades different students but you can kind of see the years of covid and how um those numbers are really less than the um the previous years but heartening also when you had the slide with the the cohorts and how those kids are also slightly improving I'm just wondering if you are aware of any maybe State initiatives or if there's something specific maybe the district is thinking about specifically for those um groups because you can see theyve kind of started behind you know kindergarten reading on a computer being in front of classroom um I mean on Zoom for two 2 and a half years practically for some um that's a long time and I'm just wondering if you are aware of any maybe State programs or things that the district can do to kind of because I can imagine these numbers as they get to middle school or high school I'm just kind of trying to think ahead so I think um one thing that we've been looking at as a district that that has been really beneficial and mtss or multier systems has only been this is our second year right but one of the shifts that we have started to make intervention at the K5 level always look this way but now really intentionally looks this way K8 is this idea of making sure that students are really receiving a double dose um one we're intervening early we have to identify early and then they're receiving a double dose and what do I mean by that that we are exposing them to the grade level standards so they're still progressing with the rest of their grade and then we're also accelerating with the intervention so that eventually we're hoping that they catch up right because what happens is if you're taking them out like let's say they need a reading support and they're and you take them out from their class the rest of the class is progressing and they're here they're never going to catch up so you need to do both at the same time you need to acel accelerate and expose them to the grade level content right so having that double dose and making sure that our intervention is is not at the same time as much as we can do that um that they're receiving their reading instruction in the classroom and then giving our classroom teachers and our interventionist time to talk with one another to articulate and what are the goals that are happening in intervention and how can the teacher also support that and groups in the classroom because that also accelerates that growth so those are two huge shifts that we've really worked very hard on and we continue to work on um and making sure we give teachers release time to talk with the interventionists that has been very helpful and very productive and we're seeing accelerated growth because of that so I think that will help thank you great questions L and Fu thank you again for the Pres presentation I know uh you touched upon this with Dana's question but could you just talk about in general how the DLI students are doing um in comparison to the general education court with regard to njsla sure um so in regard to njsla and we do look at this closely because it is a question that we have and we want to make sure you know and it's also a question that parents have and community members have um so we want to make sure that in math and science especially but also language arts that they're receiving what they need and that they're making as much progress and what we have seen we look at it with both cohorts combined and then we also look at the information you know how are the students um in the Spanish speaking cohort doing and how are the students in the Mandarin speaking cohort doing and what we're noticing is that across the board they are performing as well if not better in some areas um as our general students yeah we're not seeing any deficiencies in any of the content areas sure Rachel hi Barbara again just to reiterate what everyone has said thank you for this really comprehensive presentation um just a quick question on I guess on slide 81 you had shown the difference between how many the percentage of uh 11th and 12th graders taking act and SATs I I was curious It's I I think I it's to me the number I thought was lower than what I would have expected is that indicative of maybe like test option on now with colleges I'm just curious if that's what what you all think is the reason why those numbers seem lower than I think some students are not taking assessments if they feel like they know need to okay I do think that that's one of the reasons why um as schools have moved to test optional although now there seems to be a shift back so I'm wondering ing if that number will look different next year right as as universities and colleges are now moving away from that um honestly I think students and families weren't sure what to do they were not sure whether they should submit or not submit um their Tas scores and so you know they were were sort of hesitant to take it and have that out there um and we're not doing it you know so it's it's something to keep an eye on for sure is that a number that historically has been maybe higher and we're just seeing that shift yeah okay okay thank you thanks Rachel um I'm just gonna move to this side real quick schw hi Dr gold um I'm just wondering if you could share I know there's so many curriculum changes and interventions that we're implementing how is the district supporting the teachers in making all these changes and understanding the curriculum changes I could do whole hour so I'll give a very general overview um we have different structures depending on the grade level band um so at the K5 level we use something similar to plc's or professional learning communities um they're called Power hours and they happen in the morning time we also use faculty meetings but mostly it happens in the morning and teachers are given coverage or we have half days um and we use our teacher coaches we have a number of teacher coaches as well as our supervisors support a lot um of that work and they meet with teachers during a release time to make sure that they have time for planning to look at data for their students uh to plan their small groups to be able to look at the new curricula to look at the new standards and all of that so we have that monthly sometimes more than once a month uh depending on how many different initiatives a teacher is a part of or is expected to implement um the same is true at the middle school except they do it more through department meetings so our supervisors take on the bulk of that work at the 6 through 12 level um they do it through their department meetings and then they also do um half day release days or professional development for teachers as well um it's a little well I wouldn't say it's easier we we don't need as much sub coverage at the secondary level um but um they also do professional development that way so the supervisors have meetings with teachers and do a lot of work with professional development around the curricula looking at data um planning small groups planning assessments so depending on what their Department goals are and then I get to have lots of conversations and oversee what that looks like for each of the Departments um with the different supervisors so there are like multiple sort of layers that are around that and we have coaches K through2 that support that work as well they're called teacher resarch Specialists but in our district but they're teacher coach thanks back oh hi Liz ahead I just have to ask you one followup question um it's again about the uh English language Learners so on that slide that where you describe about the access you mention here that all English language Learners even those who have declined Services must sit for Access um the part about where they've declined Services I'm just wondering about that like is like what is the district's approach with trying to encourage you know these are benef it's a benefit to have the services so how do you approach that situation I think that um all families are given the opportunity to have Services there are times that families that CLI services for a number of different reasons um so one reason may be because you know there may not be services at a particular school and they would like their child to be at a certain School their home school versus being at a different school where the services might be housed um and so that might be a reason why they may decline Services another reason might be because their child you know is close to exiting or receive services in a previous district and might be a level three or a level four and is really really close and they feel like they're doing really great and have made a lot of progress and may not need the services so they may decline for that reason um another reason families May decline is sometimes our students with disabilities um don't have received services for a number of years and don't pass the access test not because of their English proficiency or their language proficiency but because of a different need um and the family knows that they're getting their their needs met through the students individualized uh learning plan so there are a number of different reasons a family might decline services but we always encourage and offer and they you know and and try to um persuade them to provide the services and we do that every every year so even if they declined year we always go back and ask them if they would like Services the following year great thanks and back to LY thank you Liz for that question I also had a question about the declining but I just wanted to point out and I think um when I saw it the first time just the consistency at the high school level with the SATs across from year to year to year and also the AP exams um you know everyone's like oh how's the district doing how the district doing and I think just the consistency from year to year with these at least test scores I know you know people prepare for that and whatnot but um what a great job the teachers in the classes are doing teaching these college level courses really and also um The District in general with the students in high school so just wanted to make a point of that great and also you know something to note about our AP um courses as well they're all available now for dual enrollment for TC andj so that's another really huge benefit for our district and for our students and our families thanks Anie other questions okay I have a couple um just a clarifying question about the um students who take the dynamic learning map assessment is that um are they taking that instead of the njsla yes they take that in place of njsla these are students with disabilities um and their disabilities prevent them from being able to take njsla so instead they take the dynamic learning gotcha and then so one of my other questions you already answered earlier was uh the difference between a pushin versus a uh pull out model um what determines which model to use is it more Logistics or is it individualized for for our multilingual Learners or for I guess for our multilingual Learners so um their level of proficiency right now is what is determining that um so for students that are levels one and two so are students that are newcomers and need more support they receive uh pull out services and then they're also integrated in the classroom the rest of the day but they have one block of time during the day where they're pulled out and they're receiving um support from our um teachers and then the rest of the day they're pushed in and then um for levels three and four students that have more language proficiency they're uh receiving push in support okay um and then so you mentioned the uh you're in your second year of using the multi-tiered system of support um so you're still you know working through it I'm just curious what what are some highlevel aspirations like that you'd like to see implemented moving forward so I think um with our multi-level uh systems of support So in year one we saw significant progress um for for schools especially in data conversations with our teachers and being able to really use information about our their students to make informed decisions around small group instruction and so that would be a really great benefit um for our five schools that are now implementing to move in that direction the other thing that we also saw was uh significantly fewer referrals to special education in our schools where we implement it because we were intervening early and we were identifying kids for um interventions and we were were already giving them interventions we didn't have as many students that needed to be referred for special services because they were already being provided with interventions and they were making progress and so we would like to see that continue awesome well thank you once again um for this very very comprehensive report love all the data um thank you okay all right now I think we can move on get back to my place so that takes us to our first opportunity for public comments the board invites thoughts and reactions on agenda items and items of concern from members of our community who are present each participant is asked to give his or her name and address prior to making a statement which will be limited to 3 minutes in accordance with board policy 0167 all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer this public comment period shall be limited to 60 minutes do we have any public comments tonight okay just line up okay I'm just go ahead go ahead yeah but if anybody else would like to go you can you can line up [Laughter] after that sounds good my name is j v i for or Le Court in West wi and uh I wanted to just say a word of thanks um Dr that presentation was it was incredible but it was also firm as as a in this community to see a data informed approach to instruction and the education here is really very hardening and so thank you for for putting that together and thank you to this entire group Dr aderhold and this board I've lived in this community for 13 years I'm a parent of two children who are in this school system they have been since kindergarten and I come to this meeting with just an incredible sense of gratitude for the work that you all do when I think about the education my children are getting the opportunities they're getting I have a big sense of thanks to all of you and to the Educators and administrators here so just thank you all I really appreciate that um the second thing I'd like to say very quickly is I know there is an election coming up for the board and I I happen to know two of the folks who are running well I I know Kuja bansal and aenta sha both his friends um of myself and my family as community members and as fellow parents um I wanted to just say a word based on somebody who who knows them and knows them well um I think the world of that I think the kind of dedication that I've seen here tonight is the kind of dedication I know I have seen for the entire time that I've I've gotten to know them I know this is not an easy job I know it takes time away from family and so on um if you have not gotten a chance to to get to know these two two individuals I would really encourage you to do so um and have that conversation I think the world will them and I think you will too uh with that thank you so much for your time and uh thank you for letting me cut the front thank you so much hello everyone my name is anura I'm a resident at 20 Fairview Avenue in Prince conjunction part of w sper um I guess my question is directed to you Dr gold I was curious about the um extensive um and very impressive data collection that you had uh for the SAT for the to 2024 math performance I noticed a n digigit decrease and I'm curious about I think it was 683 to n degre nine digit difference um is that due to the switch between pencil and paper sat to digital um and I don't know if this cohort was the first year that took it or if it's next year's cohort that's taking it um did that have an impact I saw the ELA remained exactly the same I think it might have been 657 as the number um but I'm very curious about that especially considering while I have an eight to four-year-old and sat formats do change year toe um there's such a push to show so many different methods for Math and for English um so that's my first question and I do thank Puja for inviting me this is my first um Board of Education meeting and I'm very excited to be um a participant and Civic civically engaged uh resident I'm looking forward to more thank you um so just to clarify so this is the public comments we we uh we have the option to yeah there's no questions are answered right now but well I'm sure there'll be a followup questions to you yeah so Madam president typically what we we do is any questions that come up uh we let everyone speak um so as to not eat into the time and then at the end of the public comment period if we're able to address the questions we we will kind of address them all at once um if not then somebody will definitely get back to you um if it's more of a datadriven uh question that might take a little research uh might take us some time thank you for your time thanks all right we've got a line of people hello hi G three CH so again very good presentation and uh she came in to talk about something else but the presentation was so good I want to bring up two two three points and I understand uh you know it's up to you whether you want to respond to them but I you the things that I want to bring up uh one of the things is the perogi the pagogi changes in terms of how you teach across elementary middle and high school so do you really look at that uh and are you training these kids on how to take sa and once they move to a more higher level of coures what does that take what that rer right from a lot more self you know lot lot more instruction based to you know take your own notes self-study so in my experience at least as a parent in the district I found that's a big team for kids so some of them can cope with it some of them don't it takes them while uh the teachers can help yeah because they spend most of the time in school so that's something we should look at you know how do we train the kids to change the way they study to change the way they learn as they move across these different schools the second uh point is really on the way you track these kids do you really track at times how a particular individual or groups of individuals how they performed as they move across elementary middle and high school or is the study more related to this is what's going on in elementary this is what's going on in middle school and this is what's going on in high school so it'll be interesting to look at how students carry themselves as they go through the different F schools and how good they are at you know managing their workl because the workload is definitely sh and I can tell you for a fact having spoken to a lot of PS in the district but that's a challenging part just getting used to the escalation in the workload and uh the things that they have to cope with as a movement policies of the schools uh the third thing is uh obviously symptoms right and I don't know if you look at symptoms like tardies increase in tardies in high school compared to elementary middle and some good cause analysis on that and uh that would really do some interesting sites uh the second point on this was the change in policy I think this year change in policy in U allowing students to take up AP exams if they not update for that subject uh there's a lot of discussion around that uh I didn't see that being addressed as part of your presentation uh so that's another question when the district changes policy how do you track how you're doing and there have been a lot of policies changes recently that have taken a lot of paring speci price not saying they are good or bad no judgments there but do you at least track like multi uh groups in same classroom I think we had some parents some and talk about that so how is that performing you know putting honors and other regular uh coures in the same uh thing and how would this AP exam thing also perform so uh running out of time so just that maybe I'll come back with the other topic thanks so much for your presentation thank you um look like we have someone else this from thank for related to the change in so my son is like currently junor here and we plan our fores and the when he was in the middle of the but now suddenly the rules are Chang we cannot take the fores which are long back 3 years so program of studies is the one based for all like so we are following that they have been mentioned that clearly that AP exams can be taken the list of coures have been mentioned in that so we are following that we are going be planed already every summer 8 summer 9 9 summer 10 10 summer 11 11 summer what we need to do these are the courses we are planning 24 courses for four years and what are the AP exams which we are not planning to take in the school but we want to take the so now this rule is affecting us we cannot take the hes you know that right nowadays Sur in the township or everywhere is like fin very difficult now each course like $110 we are paying to get a course credit when we go to the college we are going to get the credit for $5,000 worth so we are going to affect it's very hard day for everyone maybe people may not be coming here but taking out this rule this facility for the students now he is affected he he cannot whatever we is breaking now like we have only 12th grade 12th grade already we have planed for the CL system so what requesting is it's impacting to so many people so much cost involvement it's like $5,000 versus $100 and also there is opportunity for the students to explore the new subjects because we have only 24 questiones they can take during four years and AP exams when they expl apsychology want to take it he don't have a spot but he can take AP exam by now that opportunity is done so we are requesting the board and super looking to the help us and make the kids we don't want any hles for the kids what they plan at least for the who already in the high school and they are going to like a junior senior year we have we request you to look into that and give the acception for the students thank you it looks like we have do you have another comment hi my name is adre bean and I am here to speak as a um employee of the district I recently attended the South Hall of Honor on Saturday evening so I wanted to report back about how great that was um the home honor itself sou is a really great event and we were able to celebrate um inspirational teachers and teachers who give service but also seven alumni that have gone into the world and done remarkable things and those alumni came from all different Pathways from Ro tech school to no College to um to college um one's an NBC reporter one's a multi-million dollar electric company owner and um as we were listening to their stories um it was really really a wonderful evening because what they talked about was their school experience and how it shaped them and how what we do in this District matters um the teachers that talked to them and guided them and how we valued all of their different Pathways um it was a really really great evening and I I think about all of our really wonderful alni out there that have taken different roads and traveled different ways and been successful and we don't always have time to honor all of them but at the hall of Honor what we do is we we take the time to honor what we do and what we mean and um it was a really really great event and I encourage um board members community members um in two years when we have it again to ATT 10 um because it's very uplifting and it really helps you understand our school and our culture and our purpose so um again I want to thank the H honor committee for a really great evening I want to thank the alumni that came out and shared their stories and um I want to thank the board for supporting all of our programs including theall alni thanks thank you do you have any other public comment hi good evening sh one road um I wanted to highlight something really positive from the last week so for the past couple of years I've had the privilege of chairing the wof book fair and this this year was truly special um this year our wof students and families rais more money than any of the five past uh Book Fairs that I've been a part of for the share the fair initiative which supports local uh schools and libraries who have fewer resources it was really incredibly heartwarming to see our students and families Embrace community service and helping others um as parents it's encouraging always to see that the values we're teaching at home like kindness consideration uh positivity being reinforced in the school environment so I was really proud of all the generosity reflected in the past week at yop which is small But Mighty um and I'm excited that I was able to be part of this initiative with my amazing co-chairs um I am a new Millstone parent as well and I'm excited to volunteer this year this week at their book fair learn about their processes and success um so I just wanted to share this accomplishment with the board tonight um and if given the opportunity I am a school board candidate um I do hope that I'm able to work with Puja and the rest of the board to continue to Champion these values thank you thank you anybody else for this first public comment period going once okay um I'll now move to close this public comment period um and I invite um uh the following chairs to give our oh if you can actually so hold on hold that thought I'll do my best to respond to just a couple of the comments um some might require some looking into but um there was a question with respect to the percentage of um sat tests that were are being administered in its mid-40s right now if you go back to 2017 2018 uh preco we were at 86% of our students were taking that assessment right so significant drop with respect to that and that there's there's a big swing that happens right around 2018 when the University of Chicago in particular dropped the SAT and made went test optional when University of Chicago did a tremendous number of District excuse me uh universities and colleges around the nation um there's a organization called fair test.org and they have a 18-page listing of all the co all the colleges and universities that are now test optional it's over 900 universities um but interestingly our our average has not changed all right so if you look at how our kids are fairing on the SAT average and you go back to when 86% of the students were taking the sat in 17 we were 1315 average across North and South in 2018 we were 1338 there's a little VAR um variability sometimes in the scores between cohorts and between the slight assessment changes or slight standards changes but remarkably over 1300 on average all the way through that duration whether it's 44% or whether it's 86% so our students do really well in that respect um and then to uh speak to the question of the math drop this this past year 20 March of 24's Administration is the first time that the SAT was 100% digital so you're right on point with suggesting that that's a national drop that was seen in mathematics uh it's attributed to the movement the entire tea of the test going digital for the first time and it speaks to just U the importance of students learning how to take these Assessments in a digital environment because that's going to be the wave of the future um with respect to this type of assessment um with respect to uh the question that was raised uh just generally about a change in P I won't speak to an individual family circumstance but the the change that went in place a year ago with the program of studies um that was presented in November of 202 uh3 and then and then adopted in December of 2013 um for the 2425 school year was the change that uh there would be um if we offered the AP course in District there would not be the ability to self-study for that assessment that was never the intention of AP programming it was always the intention that you take the courses that we offer here in District and that self-study wasn't um an option uh some of the challenges specifically around that is you just see those astronomical numbers that Dr G um has indicated and you can look to slides when it's posted I believe tomorrow slid 72 and 73 shows the 5year average but this last year we administered over 30 700 AP exams 3770 I think one 3771 AP exams to over to over 1400 students now that basically means the entire month of May we're offline our our counselors our test administrators our administrators or test administrators um our our common spaces our gyms our um our cafeterias our auditoriums are offline um and we're testing constantly um so one small step was to look at self-study students now we did um increase still so did less students take the assessments no more students took the assessments um more students took in District classes as well and our class A our average scores continue to go up if that's even possible um so um it's something that would have to be taken under advisement to to look at anything nothing changes in the public comment because that's a voted on um b um board matter that gets uh reviewed uh through the program of studies process and it would have to be voted on for by the board of education so it's something that um hear the gentleman's comments I respect the comments and uh we'll have to take it under advisement to look at it could you just clarify that students are still able to self-study and take a test that yeah sorry so so the again the self-study was specific to um if we offer the course right so if if we offer the course self- study is not an option but there are um places where AP offers courses that we do not teach um and the self-studying does occur uh and is is allowed in those program options um so I'm trying to think of an example that one we don't offer a AP geography AP Japanese AP right so we do have areas where we don't offer the course but students wanted to um AP Psych is one that as we offered AP Psychology years ago that was a big self-study one Years Gone by um and now we offer over 12 sections a year of AP psychology teacher all right so we have three full-time or three full-time teachers that dedicate majority of their schedule to AP Psychology um and that's one that each year we see greater and greater enrollment years ago um we did have a lot of self-study there it was perceived to be the social sciences versus perceived to be places that you could self-study and just blow past them to open up room in your schedule to take other things um there is some value though um in in some colleges and universities will grant credit and many don't um we have worked really hard with dual enrollment to en enhance the amount of dual enrollment um options and the vast majority of our AP courses I believe all of our AP courses are now eligible for dual enrollment credits um and that means you know there is a fee you don't have to take the SAT you can take um enroll with your children you you do an enrollment process uh during that course and you have an opportunity to get a transcript with tcj we also have a dual enrollment program with middlex County Community College um so those two universities um have been gracious in working with us and Dr G I don't know if you want to add anything to that uh there's one other exception uh World Language so we do have an exception with World Language because for the Seal of biliteracy students can also self-study especially because um often we have students that are by uh by literate and they're able to they have a language that they speak other than the language that they're taking in school and so they are able to self-study and take that for World Language purposes so that is an exception that we have to that rule as well even if we offer it um in court and then the other piece is that although it's difficult to find you can self-study and take the course and the assessment somewhere else we just do not offer for you to take it here so if you want to take AP Psychology and you want to take the assessment somewhere else you can do that we just are not you just can't take it here at wwp thank you no problem um and for our committee reports next um I'd like to invite Dana the chair of the administration and Facilities committee to give her report oh good evening everyone um the administration and Facilities committee met on October 17th the committee reviewed um several policies and regulations which are recommended for a for a first reading at tonight's meeting um that is p uh policy 7510 use of school facilities and its accompanying regulation and then um policy 1122 which is benefits covering non-affiliated administrative category a um due to Rising costs of the districts thef committee recommends um looking at increasing current facility use rates in the future um the committee also reviewed the following um several policies and regulations which are recommended for a second reading and approval at tonight's meeting and that is um policy 3160 physical examination and it's and the regulation of the same number um policy and regulation 4160 physical examination policy 9181 which is volunteer athletic coaches and co-curricular activity advisors and assistants um and a bylaw 0141 which is um board member number and term as for the referendum the close out process continues for the remaining referendum projects including the media centers at moris Hawk walk in Village Elementary Schools the committee supports the proposal for the installation of a practice Cricket pitch at High School North the committee discussed District facility use by outside groups and recommends an upgrade to brightley which is formally called um School dude software a shelter location agreement with the New Horizon's Mont Montour school was also discussed and is recommended for Renewal the committee will next meet on November 12th all right thank you Dana um any questions or comments from the board okay um next I'll invite ly to give a report on curriculum committee thank you gryn uh the curriculum committee met on October 15th we began with a presentation by carollyn C cotton um Miss cotton shared uh with the committee her proposal for her dissertation titled having the confidence to effectively teach adaptive physical education the committee engaged in dialogue with Miss cotton and around her desire to increase teacher self-efficacy around teaching adaptive physical education uh next Dr gold uh reviewed the testing presentation with the committee uh which you saw tonight uh and engage in a discussion around the results as well as a District's next steps to support student achievement on the agenda for voting tonight first uh the curcum committee recommends acceptance of the elementary and secondary Education Act um um entitlement Grant from the state of New Jersey for the fiscal year 2025 originally approved for submission on July 30th 2024 um to $625,000 to include prior year carryover as follows so Title One Part a uh $259,800 title 3 $ 71,7 title three immigrant $121 1,585 and title 4 3,827 next the committee recommends um this approval of disposal of the following obsolete items in accordance with R7 300.1 first uh 356 books from woff Media Center 1463 books from the Dutch neck Media Center 67 books from marce Hawk Media Center uh 727 from the milstone river um Media Center 31 book from Grover Middle School um all items meet one of the following criteria either they are so outdated as to no longer serve as worthy instructional tools or are worn and damaged um to preclude effective use and economical repair or restoration okay next for field trip uh excuse me yeah field trips excuse me um just approval of the following for both High School North and South their model un Nations um teams to parpan New Jersey from November 21st through the 24th of November uh the cost of the trip is approximately 360 students and also for both high schools model Congress uh to Yale University from December 5th through the 8th the cost of that trip is approximately $450 per student um next for High School North specifically say Science Olympiad uh to mass uh to MIT um from January 24th to the 25th the cost of this trip is approximately $225 per student and then just a correction um for model Congress to Columbia University from January 30th not 20th January 30th through February 2nd of 2025 the cost of that trip is approximately $475 per student uh future Business Leaders of America to Atlantic City from March 10th through March 12th cost of the trip is $400 per student um approximately model Congress to upen from for from March 27th through March 30th cost of that trip about $450 per student and then Washington seminar um from Washington DC from May 28th through the 31st of 2025 cost of the trip is about $825 per student moving on to specifically to High School South model Congress to Harvard from um February 20th through 23rd of 2025 the cost of that trip is approximately $750 per student Washington seminar um for South to to DC in March 4th from March 4th through March 7th of 2025 cost of the trip is also 825 per student uh and there's a correction on this one for senior class it is to senior class trip to Walt Disney World from March 7th through March 11 it lists March 30th from March 7th through March 30th which I'm sure the high school students would have loved but uh it's actually March 7th through the 11th that's a correction the cost of that trip is approximately for $1650 per student that would have been great um and then we have model Congress to the uh to upan also from March 27th through the 30th of 2025 the cost of that trip is $450 per student yeah yes I think I got all the field trips all right uh next the curriculum committee recommends approval for the following tuition agreements uh first Mercer County Technical School District for placement of students as needed in the Alternative High uh high school program at the Thomas Rubino Academy for the 20242 school year at a cost not to exceed um $1,926 per month per student uh the College of New Jersey for placement of one student in child growth and development for the 2425 school year at a cost not to exceed $550 College of New Jersey for placement of one student into AP Psychology for the 2425 school year at a cost not to exceed $550 middle sex Community College for placement of one student in to forensic science for the 2425 school year at a cost not to exceed $135 and middle SE Community College for the placement of one student into AP Psychology for the 2425 school year at a cost not to exceed $135 okay next uh the community uh excuse me Community Education programs the committee recommends approval of the listing of community ed winter and spring 2025 adult youth and after school enrichment programs listed in the um the agenda tonight so and then now the committee will next meet Tuesday November 12th thank you thank L uh now oh actually any questions or comments for the okay perfect next I'd like to invite Louisa for the finance committee report sure the finance committee met on October 16th um first the committee reviewed the financial reports the administration shared that there are enough funds to complete the year The District's financial position is similar to Prior years at this time the committee reviewed the following motions on the agenda for approval to approve the submittal of the district's health and safety evaluation of school buildings checklist statement of insurance form to allow the business administrator to use compe competitive Contracting for the Community Education enrichment programs to enter into the school's Health Insurance Fund and to contract with Benard services for prescription services to approve several field trips and to approve employee travel staff updated the committee on construction projects the referendum projects are coming to completion the last of the closeout actions are occurring for Hawk and Village libraries and painting of the high school north tennis tennis courts is almost complete staff also reported that work on the 23 24 audit is underway um documents are being shared electronically with the Auditors the administration shared the budget review calendar with the committee the budget um system will be open for schools to enter their information very soon annually the district needs to submit a health and safety evaluation checklist the administration shared a blank copy of the annual health and safety evaluation checklist to demonstrate what is completed each year for each school which is then reviewed by Administration and sent to the County Office of Education the district also needs to annually submit an M1 and comprehensive maintenance plan the administration shared that this will be sent to the County Office of Education the M1 summarizes past facility maintenance expenditures along with the minimum amount required for the 25 26 year the comprehensive maintenance plan shows what was spent on maintenance by building for the past year what is budgeted for the current year and an anticipated budget for the 2526 fiscal year staff briefed the committee on healthc care costs due to inflation new medical procedures such as Gene therapies that can cost 3 million per treatment along with the trend of increasing usage we are having trouble getting our stoploss insurance renewal we received only one renewal and that was at a 37% increase one quote came back at 175% of our current stop-loss aggregate premium these quotes are preliminary as these companies asked to see the most recent up-to-date claims we recently had two catastrophic claims that will increase these per these proposed renewal rates the school's Health Insurance Fund known as the shiff has offered us a firm quote of 10.6% increase over our current rates this includes benac card as our prescription carrier instead of the shifts Express Scripts a carrier that we have heard many complaints about four years ago when we became self-insured we had considered the shift however at the time the value of their premiums would have put our district at risk of being a too large a percentage of the pool now that the shift has grown with total pre PRS in excess of 600 million that concern is no longer valid and they are a safe spot to place our insurance so the shift will offer savings over a fully insured product as it is an insurance pool which eliminates the profit motive of a fully insured carrier we will remain with ET as the health carrier and only the prescription carrier changes for cafeteria services staff reported that SF has had a relatively smooth startup of the school year their food is noticeably fresher than our previous food service provider they are still struggling with fully Staffing the operation the from scratch recipes require more work and cooking skills from the staff rather than just heating previously cooked items this has been an exciting challenge for some and not so much for others we've had a few retirements and the cost of health care provided by SF has also been a complaint for employees that have left the District administration shared that Transportation had a relatively smooth start to the school year a few routes needed to be split up placing students on other routes to shorten their times due to our tiered structure of bus routes there are a few field trip routes on the agenda for approval in their other business the administration reviewed the cost of our current custodial contract with respect to cost if the service was brought in house this analysis showed that the district is operating in the most efficient manner currently staff also reported that due to a cost of living adjustment there is an increase in the minimum wage to 1549 per hour so the hourly rate chart will be updated to reflect this increase the finance committee will next meet on Tuesday November 12th thanks Louisa um any questions or comments okay so that takes us to the voting portion of our meeting um can I get a motion for administration items numbers 1 through6 uh Dana and Liz okay a second okay we'll start with Miss Krug yes Miss Chenier yes Miss zovich yes Miss bonsel yes yes Miss ho yes Miss migga yes Miss Shetty yes Miss Juliana yes Miss McAn yes and now can I get a motion for curriculum and instruction items numbers one through five uh ly and Pua okay we'll start with we'll start with Miss malga yes Miss bonsel yes Miss jenera yes Miss ho yes Miss Krug yes M shett yes Miss zich yes Miss Juliana yes M McAn yes and can I get a motion for finance items numbers 1 through six plus the blue addendum uh Louisa and sha okay we'll start with Miss hoe yes Miss Shetty yes Miss bonson yes Miss chenera yes Miss Krug yes M migga yes Miss zich yes Miss Juliana yes Miss MC yes uh can I get a motion for personal items numbers one and two plus the green pink and yellow add denda uh Robin and Louisa okay we'll start with Miss bonsel yes Miss chenera yes misso oh yes yep Miss so okay next is Miss Krug yes Miss malga yes Miss Shetty yes Miss zovich yes Miss Juliana yes Mr M yes um before we move move on I would actually like to acknowledge a few retirements um that we just voted to approve um first um I'd like to congratulate uh Stephen salc um High School North Health and health and physical education teacher who is uh retiring after 21 years at wwp uh ASU Sharma uh instructional assistant at Maurice Hawk who is retiring after 22 years in the district and Glenn delor uh Matt teacher at Grover Middle School who is retiring after 23 years at wwp so I just we just want to extend our congratulations uh and best of luck in um your new chapter of your lives and really want to thank you for your many years of service to the district so thanks and congratulations one moment 16y sure Chris did I say Finance items numbers one through 16 or did I say six pretty sure I said 16 but okay okay just want to confirm it all right cool all right so we're good to go all right perfect thank you thank you for confirming um ah now can I get a motion to approve the Board of Education minutes from our October 8th meeting um Pua and uh Liz all those in favor say I uh any abstentions I'm abstaining I abstain and I abstain right thank you um do we have any boardly Aon reports this evening is that a yes I think we do I think you do well L and I you know we continue to work with the different ptsas and I would just say that you know it's always been uh very helpful to work with them and to acknowledge and I just want to encourage there's so many different efforts that are taking place and I'm we're hoping that the Community does support because these are critical to the you know the funding for whether it's senior programs and others so just continue to gain the membership and throw it and just uh to recognize Millstone River School uh who after another year they have received a school of excellence award so just wanted to um congratulate that PTA group and uh and the administrators there thank you so much um do we have any other leison reports okay okay any new business um that takes us to our second opportunity for public comments the board invites comments from members of our community who are present each participant is asked to give his or her name and address prior to making a statement which will be limited to 3 minutes in accordance with board policy 0167 all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer this public comment period shall be limited to 15 minutes um do we have any public comments for this second round looks like we have someone so I'll make this real quick uh I think it's been a year since uh we talked about L School St and uh you know we are still the he I am and my kid is and a lot of us in the district are still a silent suffering majority uh as we kind of wait for the V to deliberate on uh we watched last November as the board appointed the committee uh we watched who was on the committee and uh how well thought through this whole thing was and uh there were four or five recommendations right so we are hoping if we watch some more meetings we hope there would be some budget allocated or at least one of the recommendations would be acted upon I think the one that Dr McDonald really talked about as a logical next step is the survey of the District so uh we were hoping that something has moved forward on that front and uh I was very harden when Liz uh you know in your statement uh I think you're up for re-election this year as well you talked about mental health and uh it really touched my heart because you got very specific so it means it's coming from your heart but these are these are one of the things that affect mental health you know kids getting up late in the morning trying to catch the bus coming in with 30s getting periods because they're not ready so it all has a dominal effect and and things have changed if you look at the towns around us uh they are doing the right things them are moving and you know we we call ourselves the district who's you know doing very well so what's stopping us from making a change we've done this in the past so again hoping that the board will act on it uh and something will come outly uh the second question I had was around uh an item on the agenda which is B 0141 uh again I'm sorry this is a d question but it deals with number of board members and uh their term so this was the second reading today it's not very clear what has changed has it being Ved upon what was the earlier language so again I'm sorry this is ignorance on my part but what exactly changed as far as the board number of board members is concerned and their term is concerned so if uh you'll be nice enough to answer that question that'll be great thanks thanks again right thank you um anybody else for public comment hased you um I see one contract with A1 line is 6,900 per bus two buses The second contract uh cost per bus with Shephard bus is about $2700 less and it's a contract for one bus what's the difference between those two buses is a destination 2700 seem an awfully large difference plus um that could potentially to C savings have they contracted shepher though I don't know what the difference is between them thank you thank you any other public comments Hi man B and this time I am addressing you just as a to be reti um I started in the I became a member of the West Windor plsb Community 37 years ago um when I started teaching here I don't live in either West Wind or Plainsboro but yet I feel that it had to become a home to me um and I want to just address the board a bit specifically in this speech I I'm doing a lot of speeches on my way out so but this one is for you um I've seen a lot of boards of Education over my past 30 seven years here and um what I know about the board is that um the people that serve on it are very dedicated I can't say that I've always agreed with them but um I do know that they are hardworking and they um they serve the community well um and I just want to say that I don't know that the public always appreciates what you do um and before I go I just want you to know that I've sat here for years and I do appreciate I know that it's difficult sometimes to think not just about your only but to think about all children um and to put aside sometimes your personal feelings and do what's best for every child in the community um but yet I've worked with many of you and um and I see you do that and and and I do appreciate that um I also appreciate the million questions that you asked which is funny because I was going to say that before the testing report um because I've been to committee meetings where I've had to report on things and you always ask questions to serve the community um and you ask the questions that you think your constituents would want to know um and sometimes it's not easy to ask a question or you know we're tired at night we don't want 10,000 questions but you ask that um and you represent the community this district has been an incredible place to work it's been amazing 37 years that I had um I've been honored to serve the children of this community and that's what I do I serve the children um but I do it at the pleasure of the Board of Ed and I appreciate the opportunities that have been been given to me the thoughtfulness that you have put into the programming that I Implement every day um and just the chance to be part of your community and as I go my way I always be a member of the West plb Community and I support you um and I will always support the schools and the mission that you do here and um I appreciate the time I've had here thank you and we appreciate you Andrea [Applause] um do we have any other public comment uh oh actually I'm Sor it's only one um the same person can only uh comment once per period so next time you know two public comment periods once per period so yes um any other comments before I close out okay um I will now I'll close out this second opportunity for public comment and uh turn over to Dr aderhold all right so I can actually speak to both of the questions that were asked um the reference to bylaw 0141 is about board member terms right so in in in our on our website under about us if you click on that um you'll find the policy and regulations section it's a searchable index and you literally could take today's attachment compare it against what's there right now because this will get replaced tomorrow um and you can see that it's essentially the exact same um uh bylaw what what it does is it updates um and it just it puts it in paragraph form versus just U and this is a we use a company called Strauss Esme Strauss Esme is one of the two policy companies that um work with the majority of New Jersey school districts to keep us in line they basically regurgitate code administrative Cod for the most part so you'll see the addition of njsa 1812-15 um and it also um adds a little Clarity to the process about um filling a vacancy um in the clarification of the the term that someone would fill if it's a it's a vacancy after uh I believe it's after July July when the voting when what's that it's the vacancies created to the third Monday in July I mean to to summarize the the board's current bylaw 0141 was last updated in 2010 that was before the legislature allowed school districts to have their annual elections in November so this is being updated to reflect that change in the law for lack of better term 14 years ago um so it's just it it's not changing anything in how the board operates it's just bringing the bylaw in line with a current state law with respect to Transportation um it it's a catches catch Ken sometimes with who who bids and and who comes in these two particular ones are not local routes these are field trip routes um so um on the particular Transportation quotes you'll see school related activities it'll give a trip ID number and then a destination there is uh Newark Delaware in Williamsburg this is the Middle School um or choir orchestra trip um so they're the ones that go down to Virginia so that you get um large you know large number of students going on these are buses that um are air conditioned and are you know there there's we cannot get a local school bus to take these kind of routes so you're at the mercy of the contractors uh A1 limo is one that often bids on things like this this is where you see those uh buses that go on the casino runs up and down the turn bike um that's it's these are the biders on these kind of buses um and with respect to the second one to Cornell University this is either um model Congress or Model United Nations it's one of our student competition-based clubs um that is going up there and you can see one bus up to Upstate New York 4,000 $180 um if anyone would like to start a bus company and give us cheaper rates we greatly appreciate it um the the uh busing is um we have seen exorbitant rate increases in The Last 5 Years almost 77% increase over what we were paying five years ago um and this is being uh unfortunately we're seeing the impacts the field trips for students we're seeing the impacts to clubs and activities um districts across the board are having difficulty getting ra uh bids on their after school buses in in general it goes in relationship to some State Law changes that recently uh happened this is well it's not even recent anymore it's pre-co um things like if you have um over 17inch neck you have to have a sleep apnea study if you're going to become a driver things like that uh to know the uh to get a driver CDL driver's license to drive a bus you need to know the inner workings of an engine of a diesel bus Which you're never going to fix if you're broken down on the side of the road you're going to call for another bus but um you need to know that in order to drive a bus in New Jersey um there was one very recent change um for bus buses are really Vans uh 10 10 or less right Chris it's 10 passengers or less which um just recently within the last month Governor Murphy signed the bill to allow districts to have folks without a CDL drive drive event where that could really come into play for is for our clubs and activities that um where we if we could ever get an advisor to be willing to be certified as a driver or and that willing to drive you know a small group of eight kids up to a competition a team like a golf team potentially a tennis team this could help decrease some of those rate costs and potentially show a savings again this is just happening in the last month the inner workings of how that would happen who you can contract who you could pay um we do have a handful of our drivers that are also work for us and security and handful of our security that also work to us as subsid drivers um so we're always looking to expand the pool and if we can leverage this it's much cheaper to buy a van than a bus so it's a long-term investment for things like if we can help offset cost to Cornell University it would be a win-win for students for our local district and you know for the for the district so obviously it's something we're we're being mindful of so thank you um sorry thank you for the reminder um it's like I'm on Zoom today um um now we are going to be recessing into close executive session so I will read this um whereas the open public meetings act authorizes Boards of Education to meet an executive session under certain circumstances whereas a public open public meetings act requires the board to adopt a resolution at a public meeting to go into private session now therefore be it resolved by the West Windsor Plains Bor Regional School District Board of Education that it is necessary to meet an executive session to discuss certain items involving matters involving Personnel issues um so we will H we'll be discussing Personnel matters uh be it further resolved that any discussion held by the board which need not remain confidential will be made public as soon as feasible the minutes of the executive session will not be disclosed until the need for confidentiality no longer exists be it further resolved that the board will not return to open session conduct business at the conclusion of the exe executive session if necessary uh thank you uh everyone for your participation um and have a good rest of your evening oh oh oh sorry okay it's been a long evening um can I have a motion to recess and to close the executive session Rachel and to and fja oh Robin Robin all those in favor say hi hi