Board of Ed Meeting Summary for August 26th

I'm a little late with this post, things have started to get hectic again. Between college applications and summer assignments, plus math tutoring and sophomore orientations, I haven't had much time. But I'll definitely be continuing these posts throughout the school year, so I have to learn to make time.

Thursday's meeting started with an important Superintendent's Report concerning the current Board of Ed suit against the Hatikvah International Charter School. Dr. Magistro was looking to clarify some of the misperceptions over the suit. First, Dr. Magistro made it clear that the only thing at issue in the suit was the inadequate enrollment numbers for the 2010-2011 school year. To restate those numbers, Hatikvah was mandated to have at least 90% of its maximum enrollment of 108 in order to receive funding, meaning a minimum of 97. Based on the documents received by the Board throughout the summer, the Hatikvah school only had 40 people properly registered when their charter was approved. The major problem seemed to be a lack of accurate information provided by the Hatikvah school, and an auditor sent into the school in July had to actually contact parents in order to verify enrollment. Additionally, many of the enrollees were also still on the rolls of the East Brunswick public schools, meaning that the proper channels were not followed by registrants. Dr. Magistro then addressed the allegations that the Board and schools had not been cooperative, stating that the principles of each school had been met with and that the registration process had been explained to them. Lastly, Dr. Magistro stated that she had in fact contacted the Board of Trustees for the Hatikvah school to address these problems, but that she was still waiting for a response. To illustrate the amount of communication and documentation that the process had taken, Dr. Magistro brought to the meeting a large stack of papers slightly over a foot that contained the communications.

The current situation is this: Commissioner Schundler's decision to approve the charter currently stands, but instead of the $1.2 million originally required of the Board, only $873 thousand will be given to the school to provide for the 77 students that will be attending the Hatikvah school starting this month. The Board's suit stands, and the Board is seeking to overturn Commissioner Schundler's decision to approve the charter for the Hatikvah school through the appellate courts. A decision will hopefully be made within a few weeks.

During the For the Good of the Cause portion, in which members of the public are invited to speak, four speakers spoke on two different matters: the Hatikvah school and the bussing situation for elementary and private school children. Both parents who spoke on the Hatikvah school expressed confusion and concern over the status of their children, and one woman testified to the difficulty she had in properly registering her child. The Board responded to these concerns with assurances that parents would be kept updated and that the situation would be resolved with the welfare of the children as a top priority. The two parents who spoke about bussing were concerned about the consolidated schedules, which included students from St. Thomas, St. Barts, as well as EB public schools on the same busses in many cases. These routes meant that children could be on busses for as long as an hour, and would potentially be travelling on Route 18 and other busy roads. Mr. Giuliana responded by outlining the situation that the district is currently in with regards to bussing. Both the private schools and the public schools in the area were facing issues with cost effectiveness of bussing. There is a mandated cap on transportation costs per student, and with more students being driven to and from school by their parents, the district was facing shortages of students on busses. To address this problem, the schools had consolidated bussing, cooperating so that bussing could be provided. Mr. Giuliana acknowledged that the current situation was not perfect, but he stated that the schools were happy with the arrangement, and that the alternative would sadly be an inability to provide bussing at all.

Also presented at the meeting was the new plan for Memorial School. This plan features a number of energy saving measures, and complies with new standards for security. Major changes include: a larger parking and drop off area which will be located off of Innes Road and which will accommodated for by moving the school farther off of the road; a separation of the academic classrooms from the public facilities such as the gym, cafetorium, and library by corridors which will create two main hubs, with academic rooms in the rear and the public facilities in the front; an enclosed playground for the preschool and kindergarten children; and a second floor which will add more classrooms. For some concept photos as well as the website of the architecture firm in charge of the design, click here.

The last few items of the night were various acceptances of PTA gifts, including a PTA donation of $2,000 to the Frost School in order for it to gain the "Blue Ribbon" title through the same program that many other EB schools have received the title. Mrs. Ogden explained that this program had been in place in the past, but was suspended until only recently, which is why some of our schools do not yet have the "Blue Ribbon" title. The Board then looked at the new policies that had been presented by the Policy Committee for adoption, revision, or deletion. These policies included a new mandated policy on district employee travel expenses, a new policy on diabetes management in schools, a change that raised the minimum number of club members to 15 in order to receive funding, and changes to the pupil smoking policy and reporting violence, vandalism, alcohol, and other drug abuse policy that clarified some language. Additionally, a new policy about hate crimes and bias-related acts is also up for adoption, which will provide a definition of those issues and give administrators powers to deal with them. The last policy change that most directly affects students is the changes to the attendance policy. Previously, students in the high school were allowed a maximum of 18 absences in a full year class, 9 in a half year, and 6 in a quarter course in order to receive credit. Now, only unexcused absences will count towards that total, and the numbers will be changed to 10, 5, and 3 respectively. The appeal and review process will remain the same, and students will still be allowed to make up courses with lost credit in summer school. These policies will be voted on at the next meeting, and at that time I will provide links to their text for more detail.

That's all for this time, more updates are on their way!