MINUTES OF THE PATERSON BOARD OF EDUCATION REGULAR MEETING October 19, 2011 – 7:17 p.m. John F. Kennedy High School Presiding: Comm. Willa Mae Taylor, President Present: Dr. Donnie Evans, State District Superintendent Dr. Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard, Deputy Superintendent Leslie A. Saint, Esq., General Counsel Comm. Chrystal Cleaves Comm. Errol Kerr Comm. Wendy Guzman Comm. Alex Mendez, Vice President Comm. Jonathan Hodges Comm. Pedro Rodriguez Comm. Christopher Irving *Comm. Kenneth Simmons The Salute to the Flag was led by Comm. Taylor. Comm. Cleaves read the Open Public Meetings Act: The New Jersey Open Public Meetings Act was enacted to insure the right of the public to have advance notice of, and to attend the meetings of the Paterson Public School District, as well as other public bodies at which any business affecting the interest of the public is discussed or acted upon. In accordance with the provisions of this law, the Paterson Public School District has caused notice of this meeting: Regular Meeting October 19, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. John F. Kennedy High School 61-127 Preakness Avenue Paterson, New Jersey to be published by having the date, time and place posted in the office of the City Clerk of the City of Paterson, at the entrance of the Paterson Public School offices, on the district‘s website, and by sending notice of the meeting to the Arab Voice, El Diario, the Italian Voice, the North Jersey Herald & News, and The Record. PRESENTATIONS AND COMMUNICATIONS Status of Community Schools Dr. Evans: As you know, our district currently operates three full-service community schools. The locations are School 5, School 4, or the Frank Napier Academy, and New Roberto Clemente Elementary School. Tonight what we are anticipating is an overview and update as to the status of these schools as they are currently operating. For those unaware of what a full-service community school is, it represents the collocation of essential community services on a traditional school campus. The idea is to make more Page 1 10/19/11 convenient to families served by the school and the general community served by that school those services to be able to ensure that our kids are healthier and that their families have access to those services. With this update you will get a sense of what those services are and how we're doing. Tobi Knehr, our Supervisor of Full-Service Community Schools, will be making the report. Ms. Tobi Knehr: Good evening. Thank you very much, Dr. Evans, and thank you very much Board of Education Commissioners. Comm. Taylor: This is a slide presentation. If you'd like to take a better seat to see the presentation, please do Board. Ms. Knehr: Thank you very much for this opportunity to bring you up to speed on how we‘re doing. If I can be biased, we're doing an amazing job, but I will let our results speak for themselves. To begin with, I'd like to show you what drives our services. We base everything on a comprehensive needs assessment that is done at the schools with the assistance of the community, the students themselves, and the staff members. Then we bring all that together and we produce what is called a Theory of Change document. This document allows us to identify our vision, our mission, and all of our measures that we're going to work to achieve that will demonstrate our successes. We are an outcomes-based process. We know what we want to accomplish and we work backwards to get them. The vision of the Paterson Public Schools Full-Service Community Schools Initiative is that every child is prepared and ready to learn when they enter school everyday, our young people are well-prepared for the workplace as parents and as citizens, our communities are safe, supportive and engaged, and our parents and community members are involved with the school and their own lifelong learning. That is crucial. Our mission is to ensure that 100% of Paterson Public School District students graduate high school prepared for college and are career ready. What does that look like? There are a lot of components that go into that and some of our ideas based on our needs assessment we‘ll know that we're heading in the right direction when each student has a goal that's based on their own interests, that each student has high-quality guidance, both as case management, guidance counselors, and mentors, that each student is knowledgeable about the steps needed to reach their goals, that each student knows how to work in teams, communicate well, and is multilingual, that each student reads and writes at their highest potential and at a level that will allow them to gain a job at a living wage, that each student will be an independent thinker who is flexible and can see other points of view, that each student will be self-reliant, has a multicultural competency, and knows how to create support networks for themselves. Additionally, we need that each student will know how to write a resume. The essence of the Community Schools Initiative is the connection between home and school. That is, family support, family and community engagement activities that bring us closer to one another, it‘s quality education, and it's youth development and community development. All of those pieces go into the whole child, which then develops our communities. What makes us a Full Service Community Schools Initiative is that we include heath services that are available to not only our students, but to the community and their families. Families are defined as who is living in your home today. Before and after school programming really becomes an extended day program. Everything ties in to one another and is based and driven by the core curriculum content standards. The ultimate goal is academic achievement. Last year we began our initiative with Phase I, which is Paterson Public School Number 5. Our lead agency partner there is New Jersey Community Development Corporation and our Site Director is Mr. Ronald Cope. Under Mr. Ronald Cope‘s leadership he developed a program for communication. This is the crux of how we succeed. By developing dynamic relationships with the administration and staff, by having effective communication with Page 2 10/19/11 the school community, by developing and maintaining strong partnerships between the lead agency and the school, and maintaining community relations with the Fellows who are AmeriCorps volunteers that worked specifically this year in grades k-2. Ultimately it's the school community needs assessment that drives the initiatives. The program culture is the Effective Schools Model. By improving academic performance and providing enrichment programming, developing and maintaining partnerships, providing a safe environment for students during and out-of-school time, and working to ensure that each student reaches their maximum potential. Some of our highlights from last year include 125 students that were enrolled and actively participated and completed the k-8 extended day program. We had family engagement activities that corresponded to school activities. So no time was wasted. We also have the KaBOOM! Playground Project, which if you haven‘t seen is just down the road and we encourage everyone to go. It's open to the community. It's a beautiful playground. We also had several Make a Difference days, including the fall festival a year ago. We have a new one coming up at the end of this month. We also were able to include school performances and activities from other students throughout the district, such as Rosa Parks. One of our greatest successes, not to discount the others, was our adult ESL classes. We served 125 adults at School 5 by making available three separate classes that ran for 16 weeks. The classes met Monday through Thursday and Monday through Friday, depending on whether it was the morning, afternoon, or evening. We were able to complete a 16-week program and now we're going to start the second process where those students will be going onto Level II. It's an amazing accomplishment. I'm very proud of everybody. Looking back at the 2010-2011 school year at School 5 one of the cruxes that really made an impact was the NJCDC AmeriCorps Fellows program. They worked extensively with classroom teachers as well as for after-school programming as an extended day. We also provided homework assistance and we had some really wonderful partnerships with William Paterson University. The cultural activities and enrichments, these are taken exactly from the needs assessments and the students themselves. The students said, ―We want performing arts,‖ so we‘ve been working with a dance troupe to provide that. We've been working with Bergen PAC to carry on several of those opportunities, and also the STEM, nutrition, and Culinary Arts. If you go to School 5 even today everything is running so smoothly it's amazing. I want to highlight here that last year we had 125 students. We had to stop at 125 because that's all the funding I have. But the amazing thing is that a year before, there were only 35 students enrolled in the extended day activities. So we quadrupled that. We went from 35 students to 125 students and it pained us to cut us off at 125, but we will change that. Also, we provided activities for families and community members. With a wonderful partnership with Bergen PAC we were able to take two separate trips to Bergen PAC where families were able to enjoy a performance as well as take classes from the theater performers themselves.