Board of Ed Meeting Summary for August 13th

As some of you might know, one of the things that I'll be doing this school year is serving as the Student Liaison to the East Brunswick Board of Education (cool word I think, liaison). My liaising duties (even better word, liaising) include attending all of the Board of Ed meetings, where I'm allowed to speak during discussion time and represent us, the students! The other side of my job is reporting what I learn back to you guys, the school community. So, in this blog, after every meeting (1st and 3rd Thursday of the month), I'll give you guys a summary of some of the important discussions and happenings. Hopefully I'll also be writing in the school newspaper, but since that's only once a month (and word limited) this will be a good place to put some details up. After the eventful year we had last year, I want to make sure there's a place that students can come if they want information on what's going on, and I want this to be that place!

Today was my first meeting back since NJSP, and unfortunately among the things I missed was the presentation of the new Memorial School plans. I'm an alum, and passing by the other day I got the sad sight of a pile of rubble where my school once stood. Happily though, construction will begin soon, and hopefully there will be other opportunities for me to hear about the progress and plans. In other elementary school news, Warnsdorfer's new playground is now complete, with Bowne's playground and others near completion. Additionally, next year will see the start of an extended care kindergarten option, which give parents the option of having their children in a supervised, structured environment from as early as 7 a.m. to as late as 6 p.m. The program is optional, and will cost extra, but currently has over 65 enrollees and will provide a good alternative to daycare for many working parents. Lastly in the miscellany is news about the successful heart screenings that went on yesterday for student athletes. The screenings were optional and cost 60 dollars, but will provide parents and athletes assurance against heart related sport injuries.

Two other major topics were brought up in this meeting: news about the Board of Education's motion for an injunction against the Hatikvah International School's charter, and the (passed) motion to raise school lunch prices.

On the first issue, I should first give some background. Here is a link to the homepage of the school itself, here is a link to a discussion of the controversy, and here is a link to an article specifically discussing the Board of Ed's lawsuit. The proposed school will be a publicly funded school that will provide a particular focus on "Hebrew language and culture" to develop bilingual students and help "build partnerships for future economic and cultural opportunities" with Israel. I'll cover the debate over the school itself in a later post (the article does a good job of it, but I'll give you guys my take), because the Board of Ed's lawsuit came from a completely different angle than most of the criticisms leveled at the school. According to law, the school must have at least 90% of its maximum enrollment of 108 enrolled before starting classes and before receiving public funds. According to the numbers provided to the Board of Ed, the enrollment currently stands at 68, which falls far short of the 98 needed. The State Department of Education has already granted approval of Hatikvah's charter, but this lawsuit could prevent the school from receiving the 1.22 million dollars that it was budgeted to get. I'll keep you guys posted on developments, and I'll post on the issue itself hopefully soon.

The other major discussion topic was the new raise in school lunch prices. Without a raise, the school's Food Services budget of 2.4 million was expected to take in a 14 thousand dollar profit. While this may initially seem odd, this number should instead be seen as a surplus. Money coming in is used to make up the cost of providing the lunches, and profit is simply the extra positive income. This 14 thousand left little wiggle room however (barely half of a percent of our total budget), and the danger that we could fall into the red made raising school lunch prices unavoidable. The initial proposed hike was 25 cents, bringing the cost in the high school up to $3.50 and giving the budget a wider margin of 125 thousand (around 2.5% of the total Food Services budget). However, concerns that this amount would put an undue strain on some families' budget motivated a compromise motioned by Mrs. Vicki Becker to only increase the cost by 10 cents. However, at this point, concerns were voiced not only only the budgetary issue, but also on the logistical issue, with Superintendent Dr. Jo Ann Magistro stating that incorporating further change divisions (dimes and nickels as opposed to quarters) would slow down lines. I expressed the concern that the effective cost would be a quarter raise without the effective gain being a quarter raise, as many students both young and old would undoubtedly have a hard time keeping track of small change and would likely find themselves coming up short on more occasions. Ultimately however, the motion passed, and effective this year school lunches will cost an extra 10 cents, bringing the high school cost to $3.35.

However, around midway through the discussion the news was announced that this year, hopefully by December, a new system will be available to pay for our school lunches. The system will function somewhat similarly to a debit card through new ID's that will be issued, which will keep lines flowing faster and reduce the hassle for many students. Additionally, these new ID's are also planned to allow students to unlock doors in the morning and during school hours by swiping them. The plans are still being worked on, and again I'll keep you guys posted. Expect a Clarion article about the changes sometime in November or December!

That's all for that meeting, hope you guys found some of that useful or interesting. More posts are on their way!