How Do We Build a Great School Board?

How do we build a successful School Board that interprets to the staff the aspirations of the community for its school? How do we build a School Board that responds to the needs of the "People" and holds the "Achievement of ALL students" as priority above all else?

1. Examine the track record of the incumbents.   A bit of history as viewed from out here.  Suburbanite 2010.

2. Learn and use the OPRA PROCESS. (Open Public Records Act)

3. Learn and use the Open Public Meetings Act law. 

4. Read and Learn about THE SCHOOL ETHICS COMMISSION and the School Ethics Act.

5. Learn to write and to file ETHICS VIOLATIONS using the official School Ethics Complaint forms from the New Jersey State Department of Education.  

6. Make sure that the Board appoints a Delegate and an Alternate to the New Jersey School Boards Association during reorganization. (Reorganization meeting is held after the School Board election.)

7. Make sure the Superintendent is evaluated on a yearly basis, in writing, in a public meeting, based on whether the Goals and Objectives the Board and the Superintendent set together are met.

8. Demand to see this written evaluation form. If you must, OPRA (request in writing) the evaluation form in the finished version.

9. Write and file ETHICS VIOLATIONS on Board Members when they are seen involved in activities that are outlined as infractions by the School Ethics Commission. Read the frequently asked questions and answers about filing ethics violations.

10. Support the teachers, principals and Superintendents when they are hard working professionals and the results of their hard work is evident in the success of the students.

11. Make sure that all School Board Members get the training that is mandated and required. Praise them when they go beyond the requirement and positive results in student achievement are evident.

12. Read and understand the role of the New Jersey School Boards Association. If a School Board shuts out this organization, it is very suspicious and against the law. Taxpayers pay over $26,000.00 per year for the serices of the New Jersey School Boards Association. This is the organization that trains the School Board Members in the state of New Jersey after we elect them. When more of the community understands what the School Board is supposed to do, we will have a better school system, with more effective employees and smarter more well trained children.

A History of the New Jersey School Boards Association

Education Matters: Legal Aspects of Board Service

Open Public Meetings Act or Sunshine Law

Open Public Meetings Act..What Boards should know about Education.

Education Matters: Annual Goal Setting

Education Matters: Legal Aspects of Board Service

The Chief School Administrator Evaluation Process 

or

The Process of Evaluating the School Superintendent

The People's Town Hall Meeting on Public Education Issues & Solutions

February 23, 2013 at Community Baptist Church in Englewood, NJ

The videos.....Beginning with the Introduction. The entire Town Hall was videotaped and will be available on this blog and on Facebook for those who were not in attendance. This People's Town Hall did not focus on Englewood. It had a State and National focus, because the subject matter is bigger than our City. Other sections will be added in digestible pieces as it is digitally prepared for publication.

The Introduction: Lorenzo Richardson, Concerned Citizens Coalition of Jersey City, New Jersey

Keynote Speaker: Stan Karp, Director of the Secondary Reform Project for the Education Law Center

More to come...

Pop Up Master Plan Meetings and School Budgets for a Fee?

The email below was sent to select City Residents earlier today. Thursday will be a busy day. As you can see the meeting begins in the middle of the work day and continues until 8 pm. As if that was not bad enough, Thursday is also the day the School Board has scheduled a Budget/State of the District Presentation. Perhaps the Budget Meeting has been pushed up since the 21st was the original date. Who knows?

The School Budget, that we must vote on was left at the library and we were required to pay for a copy of the 20 page document. Why was it not put on the district website as well? One should never vote yes on something that one has never seen.

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Dear Residents,

As you probably have heard, the City of Englewood is updating its Master Plan for 2013 which will set objectives and the policies that will shape Englewood's future. After a series of general public meetings and meetings with specific constituencies, the professional project team (Brown & Keener and Regional Plan Association) has been hard at work developing the vision and finer points of the Master Plan.

On March 21, 2013, from 1PM to 8PM, the project team will host a Pop-Up Workshop to present the Englewood Vision and Master Plan to be held at 14 West Palisade Avenue (formerly Chico's clothing store) in downtown Englewood. At the storefront, visitors will be able to stop by any time during "shop hours" and take part in hands-on exercises to weigh-in on the Plan. Materials and presentations will showcase what a future Englewood could look like under the recommendations of the Master Plan.

The Plan places particular emphasis on creating an even more lively downtown; a reimagined industrial district in South Englewood; enhanced neighborhoods whose character is preserved; improved access to community amenities; and better transportation connections throughout the city and to the region beyond. In addition to hands-on exercises, residents will be able to provide feedback in comment booklets provided on site.

The Vision and Master Plan was developed over a 9-month process through which nearly 600 Englewood residents and stakeholders participated in two public workshops to shape the recommendations found in the plan. Following the pop-up workshop, the Project Team will incorporate feedback into the Plan and present it to the city in April.

Many of you have been active participants in this process and I thank you for it. We would urge you to join us at this Pop Up Workshop as your voice should be heard. Please click here to see a copy of the invitation for the Workshop.

If you should have any questions regarding the event or the Master Plan please feel free to contact me at City Hall at 201-871-6666 or by email at frankhuttle@englewoodmayor.com.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Sincerely,
Mayor Frank Huttle III

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Projected School Board Meetings. http://www.epsd.org/www/epsd/site/hosting/BOE%20CALENDAR%202012-2013%20-%20BOARD%20MEETINGS.pdf

Where Does Governor Christie's Rainbow End?

For Immediate Release Friday, March 15, 2013

Contact: Rob Duffey, (973) 273-3363 or rob@njworkingfamilies.org

Local Activists Deliver “Pot of Gold” to Citibank to Protest Governor’s $12.3m grant

Advocates decry Citi’s layoff of 276 Englewood Cliffs Employees; lack of jobs created by Christie’s programs

Englewood – Activists representing over eighty community, labor and civic organizations delivered a ‘pot of gold’ to the Citibank branch of Englewood on Friday to protest Governor Christie’s decision to award the bank $12.3 million in taxpayer dollars even after it fired Englewood employees.

“Citibank must have the ‘luck of the Irish’ to receive $12.3 million from Chris Christie despite laying off over nearly 300 New Jerseyans,” said Rob Duffey of the New Jersey Working Families Alliance. “It seems like in good times or bad this Governor always has a pot of gold ready for corporations. The problem is that there don’t seem to be any actual jobs at the end of the corporate subsidy rainbow.”

Citibank is among the many corporations that have been awarded over $2.3 billion subsidies from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA) during Governor Christie’s term. It’s allowed to collect $12.3 million in income taxes from employees it moved from Wall Street to Jersey City under the terms of a 2011 Business Employment Incentive Program (BEIP) grant. Within months of receiving the award Citibank laid off 276 employees in Englewood Cliffs.

Protestors outlined several high-profile grants they claim are suspect. In 2011 the Christie Administration awarded British corporation Pearson Education $82 million in state subsidies to move 700 jobs from its current location in Upper Saddle River to a new facility in Hoboken. At the same time it received $50 million from New York to ship an additional 600 New Jersey jobs out of the state altogether. In 2012 Prudential was awarded $210 million through an Urban Transit Hub (UTH) tax credit to cover 400 new jobs the company said they were going to create anyway.

Speakers pointed to New Jersey’s relatively weak economy as a clear indication that tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations had failed to create the jobs the Governor promised. The state’s unemployment rate is currently 9.6%, the 4^th highest in the nation and unchanged from when Governor Christie took office amidst a global recession. In 2011 the state ranked 47^th in economic growth.

Coalition leaders maintained that these grants have come at a cost to essential services and investments that could have helped New Jersey better weather the recession and join the nation in its economic recovery.

“Chris Christie paid for his failed jobs program with cuts to investments that help people get jobs or keep the jobs they have,” said Carol Gay, President of the Industrial Union Council. “He’s slashed scholarships for college students, after-school care that lets parents work full-time, and Bergen County schools to pad big business’ bottom line.”

Speakers decried the lack of any new jobs proposal in the state budget Governor Christie unveiled last week. In his budget address Christie pointed to $547 million in business tax cuts, $257 million of which were approved during his administration.

"New Jersey has paid these corporations to keep and provide jobs, but instead were losing more jobs," said Magalye Matos, an Englewood parent. "Even worse, the Governor is paying for these corporate subsidies with cuts to education and affordable after-school care. Bergen County has been hit from all sides, and the only winners seem to be the banks and developers.”

Better Choices for New Jersey represents over 80 organizations including the New Jersey Working Families Alliance, New Jersey Communities United, New Jersey Citizen Action, and the New Jersey Policy Perspective. The campaign calls for increased investment in critical public services and long-term solutions to New Jersey’s economic crisis. Some of its revenue proposals were adopted in the budget for FY 2010.     

 



  

Over 100 employees were
let go from the Englewood
Public Schools in
2012. The positions were
abolished
and these employees
 were replaced with
independent contractors.