[AsburyPark] Last night's BOE meeting
I'd like to give you a short report on last night's school board meeting. Please note that I speak only for myself and not the entire Board of Education. I must also apologize for the fact that at the ten o'clock hour last night I did not feel well enough to stay for the rest of the meeting, and I left at that time. Vice-president John Figueredo chaired the meeting, which began at 7 PM with a presentation by some of the Intermediate School students who have been selected to have their poems published in a national publication. They were introduced by their teacher, Mary Beth Skeuse, who congratulated the students and handed out certificates of merit. There was a short presentation by the Assistant Business Administrator on all of the referenda that have been passed by the people of Asbury Park since the 1980's. The State Monitor, Mr. Cowell, gave his report, stating among other things that he actually saw good things going on in the classrooms in his tours of the buildings. After the board went over their agenda, five members of the public spoke on issues of concern to them. The first person to speak was Danny McKee, president of the Asbury Park Little League, who voiced his frustration over the inability to proceed on making improvements to the Little League field at the High School because of constant bureaucratic, insurmountable roadblocks placed in the way. The latest was a Use Agreement that nobody in their right mind (my characterization) would agree to. I proposed and moved a resolution to at least get phase one of the project accomplished right away. My resolution was as follows: WHEREAS, the Asbury Park Board of Education has previously voted to enter into a joint agreement with the Asbury Park Little League calling for the League to perform various improvements to the field used by the Little League, and WHEREAS, These improvements will be performed at no cost to the Board of Education, and WHEREAS, the lights for the field have already been purchased at great cost by the Little League and are being stored in anticipation of their installation, and WHEREAS, time is of the essence in their installation and the permits have already been let by the municipality, Now Therefore Be it Resolved that, the Asbury Park Board of Education hereby authorizes the immediate installation of the lights at no cost to the Board of Education, Be it Further Resolved that the Asbury Park Board of Education hereby directs that there be no further input, advice, or demands made by the Board of Education's law firm in the matter of the lights and that Mr. Daniel McKee and the Asbury Park Little League are authorized to install the lights as soon as they are able to do so.Be it Further Resolved that, on the matter of the lights, no further use agreement other than any that may have been heretofore signed is necessary in order to proceed. January 23, 2008 Initially, the resolution passed overwhelmingly over the objection of the state monitor and the lawyer. The state monitor publicly stated that this may be the first vote of the BOE that he would overturn after consulting the Department of Ed. I said that how sad that his first veto would be to deny the kids of Asbury Park a decent Little League field. Fortunately for him, he needn't have worried about that. That's fortunate for him and unfortunate for the kids. I was informed later that the vote to approve the resolution was rescinded by the Board after I had left the meeting. The board retreated to the safety of setting up yet another meeting of the Buildings and Grounds Committee to iron out the use agreement. So Danny and the Little League are in for another ride on the bureaucratic merry-go-round, a ride that never ends. Frank D'Alessandro Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[AsburyPark] Last Night's BOE meeting
Dear Group Members: This is a relatively short report on last night's BOE meeting from a Board member who does not speak for the Board. The four and a half hour meeting began with a public hearing on the re-financing (legal term refunding) of all of the outstanding bonds we have been paying for. That includes the 1997 $2,000,000. bond issue and the year 2000 $1.3 million dollar bond issues as well as outstanding bonds from 1989 and 1994 (which involved the construction of the Bradley School). The current rate is 5.6% and the new rate will be between 3.5 and 4 %. Refinancing a total of $8.5 million in bonds at the new rate saves approximately $60,000. per year for ten years. Barbara Lesinski and I spoke of the commitment made to the people of Asbury Park when the 1997 and 2000 bonds promised not only a refurbished stadium but three separate ball fields (including a separate Little League field). Savings from the re-fi should first go to complete the promises made a decade ago. That was also the message from the members of the public who spoke at the hearing, including Danny McKee, the President of the Little League. The state monitor was even chastised by my neighbor and longtime teacher, Esther Kelso, who said Stop harassing the Little League! The monitor took that opportunity to say that he had been misunderstood, and that he never said the Little League could not remain at its present location. (Two words come to mind: Bull-ony). After the public hearing, the BOE unanimously voted to re-finance the bonds. The High School principal, Mr. Tyler Blackmore, then gave us an exciting presentation his plans to re-organize the high school and its faculty and student body into three separate academies for the 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. The first will be the Entrepreneurship, Business, and Technology Academy, the second Humanities and Fine Arts , and the third Medical, Science, and Engineering. Instead of traditional departments, there will be cross-curriculum teams of teachers for these themed academies. A closed session was held so that the BOE could discuss the status of talks with the Little League being represented by attorney Tom DeSeno, with whom a one-hour conference call was held earlier in the day. Without breaching the confidence of the closed session, it is safe to say that the controversy is now moving in the right direction. The BOE meeting resumed with a public comment session on agenda items. The first order of business after that was to appoint a new interim School Business Administrator/Board Secretary. Mr. James Cummings was appointed to that position at $600 per day. The vote was 8-1. He will not be required to attend BOE meetings, hence the reason for my no vote. Another vote of note was the vote to inform the suspended Superintendent, Dr. Lewis, that the BOE did not intend to renew his contract. Under the law, a superintendent must be told in the penultimate year of his contract (in this case the 3rd year of a 4 year contract) that the Board does not intend to renew, or else the contract is automatically renewed for the same perios of time (!) The vote to inform Dr. Lewis that this Board did not intend to renew his contract was 7 yes, one abstention (Mrs. Sanders) and one no (Garrett Giberson). We also voted to acknowledge the results of a state investigation into allegations of Grade interference by an administrator. The state found evidence that special ed laws were violated and that the BOE had to come up with a corrective action plan to remedy same. The Business Department's agenda was approved. However, I again asked that the legal bills be separated. I had asked that we be given a separate accounting for the amount of money spent thus far on the Little League controversy. No such accounting was given. The total legal bill for November alone was about $39,000. The vote was 8-1 to approve the legal bills. I voted no for the above reason. Towards the end of the meeting, the BOE went into closed session again. When we emerged, there was a unanimous vote to engage with the AP Education Association on a plan to offer a separation agreement, which may encourage a voluntary reduction in the teaching staff since future funding by the state may not allow us to maintain the same number of faculty members. The meeting ended at 11:35 PM. Frank D'Alessandro Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[AsburyPark] Last Night's BOE meeting
Hi Group Members, Last night the Board of Education held a marathon meeting starting at 6:30 PM and ending past midnight. My report on this long meeting reflects only my opinion. I do not speak for the Board. The meeting was a veritable mélange of all things Asbury, and it was a packed house again at the Bradley Elem. School. Several parents and members of the Ministerial Alliance of Asbury Park and Neptune led by the Rev. Bradley of Neptune had signs calling for investigations of the BOE, and that the BOE's agenda was hurting the children. After a half hour presentation by reps from the New Jersey School Boards Association on helping the APBOE correct deficiencies (perceived or actual) in the latest state monitoring scorecard, the Board president opened up the meeting to public comment on agenda items. The Rev. Bradley of Neptune used the opportunity to repeat his off-stated remarks urging the state to investigate the Board of Ed and its finances. A.P. Education Association Vice-president Peter Vetrano pointed out an error in the agenda concerning extra-curricular salaries for coaches. The Board then went into closed session for about an hour to discuss the Little League situation. (I recused myselfelevated blood pressure made it not possible.) The rest of the Board, the Administration, and a very upset Danny McKee (who was asked to come into the session) all know full well my views supporting Danny and his plans. While we waited for the Commissioner of Education, Lucille Davy, to appear, a member of the BOE in Neptune, Jason Jones, congratulated the Blue Bishops of their recent and future victories. The Commissioner appeared and spoke for about 20 minutes. She was there to introduce the state monitor, Mr. Mark Cowell, whom she is imposing upon the district. She explained the legal basis for the appointment and that he is to be paid $600. plus expenses per day out of district funds. He will be here for the next two and a half years. Mrs. Davy recited the litany of sins, financial and otherwise, committed by the board and the district over several years, including the time the state intervention team was supposedly assisting the district. (My take on the intervention team: They came; they saw; they had lunch.) The question I asked her concerned the veto power Mr. Cowell will have over all of the decisions made by the administration and the BOE. Our business administrator, Mr. Mahmoud, has resigned to take a similar position in a district where the grass is greener. Since Mr. Cowell would be reviewing each and every decision of any new business administrator, why not cut out the middle man and have the state monitor assume the position of Acting Business Administrator? The state will get what it wants, and we won't have to pay two bureaucrats to do one job. I did not understand her four minute answer. Mrs. Davy took questions from the public. The Rev. Bradley of Neptune, who supports the return of Dr. Lewis, the suspended Superintendent, tried to bring up that personnel matter. Other members of the public decried the state of affairs in the district. At 9:30 Mrs. Davy left, and because members of the public complained about the length of the board meeting (little did they know that it would continue for another two and a half hours), the Board president moved up the second public comment session. Among the speakers were Deputy Mayor (and former BOE president) Jim Bruno and former BOE member John Moor. Both of them were there to express their strong support for Danny McKee and the Little League. They both gave some historical background on the Little League and its place at the High School field. Danny himself spoke and expressed his feeling of betrayal. He revealed that in the closed session the new state monitor' made it clear that the Little League field would be moved to the Intermediate School. After all of the years of raising hundreds of thousands in funds from dozens of contributors, the hard physical work, the $50,000 personal loan he has taken out to make sure the project was begun, the $1,800 in personal funds he lost that very day because the state monitor and the lawyers said he could not have access to the field to do the soil test that they had insisted upon, he was devastated. Over four hours after the meeting had begun, not one page of the agenda had been broached. We went over the entire agenda, including the bills and claims. At that point I asked that the September and October bills for the lawyers be separated so that I could have the pleasure of voting no. (I will post my statement concerning the lawyers and their refusal to move in the direction that the BOE had voted for concerning the Little League, in a separate post. This one is long enough.) A majority of Board members voted no on the bill for the
[AsburyPark] Last Night's BOE meeting
Dear Group Members, This is a report on the Asbury Park School Board meeting of Thursday, October 18. As only one member of the BOE, I am obliged to say that I do not speak for the board. As meetings go, this one was relatively short (7 to 9:10 PM) and almost rancor-free! The public was given the opportunity to speak on agenda items, and no member of the public came forward at that time. The administrators responsible for curriculum gave us a 20 minute presentation on the testing results for the district. Overall, the results did show a slight improvement in some grades, a substantial increase in others, and flat or even a small decrease in isolated cases. There was enough of an improvement, believe it or not, for the state to say that we have met A.Y.P, that is adequate yearly progress for the first time in many years. Of course, what is adequate progress for the state is just rising from the depths that we had plumbed. But it is progress nevertheless, and it must be built upon. Donna Muzzicato, the new director of curriculum, gave us a presentation on what each school in the district is doing to correct past deficiencies and to improve instruction. (In my view, improving instruction and increasing test scores are not necessarily synonymous, and we are off to the best year in a long time in all of our schools, especially the Intermediate School and the High School. But we have a long, long way to go.) Mrs. Sanders and I did get into a bit of a tussle in reference to the new Math Program for grades 3, 4, and 5. She regretted our disposal of Communicator Math and I cheered the fact that it was gone and replaced with a more traditional program, namely McGraw-Hill. Communicator Math is now used fully in only one other district in New Jersey, namely Jersey City, the home of the originator of the program, a favorite with the State. When the time came for the public to speak on non-agenda items, four members of the public came forward. One said that not all teachers had received materials and books yet. Mr. Parham, the Acting Superintendent, said that he personally would see to it that the situation was remedied the following day. The other comments pertained to the Little League, which our closed session was to be about, and others asked us to set a date for a community forum on the QSAC report and to improve communication with the public via a newsletter. Our closed session lasted about 20 minutes and when we returned, voted to give the Little League the green light to go ahead with their second phase, pending resolution of typical Asbury Park deed restrictions and submission of a site plan that has already been prepared. Danny McKee and the rest of the parents and friends (and the kids, of course) of the newly revived Asbury Park Little League should be commended for working so hard and jumping though all the bureaucratic hoops presented to them. Their determination in this often-frustrating place is very admirable. When it came time for comments from the Board, I expressed my dismay at the firing of the woman who had done so much to put the SPOT program (our school based youth services program at the high school) in such good shape last year. She was summarily fired by the outside agency that the State of New Jersey forced us to outsource the program to. They had said our kids would lose those services at the High School unless we handed the program, which was finally going very well, over to an outside agency to run inside the high school. Some board members, including myself, voted to do so when that agency said they would retain the woman who had run it so well. With no warning at all, she was fired this month. I would hate to think that this was a bait and switch tactic to get approval, fire the director, and then replace her almost immediately. We do not treat our own employees in this manner, and we expected, perhaps naively, that no one running a school program for our kids in our high school would treat their employees so abruptly and without any due process whatsoever. Some of the BOE members asked our administrators to look into the situation and report back to us. Frank D'Alessandro Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[AsburyPark] Last Night's BOE Meeting
Dear Group Members: First, I want to offer the requisite disclaimer that I do not speak for the Board of Ed. That said, last night's meeting was unusual in that it was short (by recent standards), lasting about two and a half hours, and the public, which numbered about 80, offered requests and even kudos but none of the brickbats that have characterized other meetings. The civilized tone almost extended to the Board members themselves, but a few verbal swipes could be detected occasionally. At the start of the meeting, the Annual Violence and Vandalism was presented by Administrator William Shannon. This is a report required of every district in New Jersey and is a compilation of all internal incident reports from each school building. If those statistics could be relied upon, the number of such incidents is relatively low, little changed from last year, and actually declining in most cases. (Of course, we all know what Mark Twain said about lies, namely that there were three types: lies, damnable lies, and statistics.) The administrator in charge of federal, state, and private grants gave the board and public a report on NCLB (No Child Left Behind), and the various Title grants. He also promised to help the Board set up an Education Foundation, like many other districts have, to coordinate funds for additional scholarships, etc. There were two public comment sessions offered. I say offered because in the first one which allowed public comment on agenda items only, not one person stepped forward to present a question or comment! During the second session, after action had been taken on all agenda items, seven members of the public, including staff members, had requests, comments, and praise, all offered in very respectful, professional tones. I pinched myself at this point. Two items on the personnel agenda took up most of the controversy: the long-vacant position of Director of Curriculum and the new (but not additional) position of Director of Personnel Services, a human resources umbrella position. Both jobs were filled by people new to the system, which some board members preferred while others felt was wrong. For the record, I moved both recommendations of the Acting Superintendent Mr. Parham, and supported both. The first passed 6-3, the second 5-4. Board member Mr. Giberson protested that it was a shame that we are not taking care of our own. Mrs. Sanders said that she knew there were people up for the job who scored higher in the interview process. Mr. Vinny Stasio, who was Acting Vice-Principal at the Intermediate School, now has the title sans Acting. There was praise from both staff members, the public, and board members as to how the new Intermediate School was progressing, including the comment from several sources that this was the best opening of the school year in memory despite shortages in supplies and late deliveries of textbooks. Besides the usual items on the Business Office agenda, like paying our bills, I reported what we have learned at the Finance Committee meeting held earlier that evening that the City of Asbury Park has not paid one cent of the money they owe the Board of Ed for all of the programs instituted by James Famularo, the Assistant City Manager. There have been dozens of requests for the use of facilities by the City, and we have never turned them down to the best of my knowledge. But there is a hefty pricetag that cannot be sustained by the BOE budget alone, and in all of our resolutions, that cost is spelled out, and the Board has voted accordingly. Only last night did we find out that the city expects to pay nothing because they have paid nothing for the past decade. Obviously, that is an issue that must be resolved between the Board and the City. We both share the responsibility to do what is in the best interests of the children. Also, the city collects the school taxes but has not always paid them to the BOE in a timely fashion, sometimes withholding payment for one month and doubling up the next, an unacceptable business practice to say the least. That must be addressed as well. There was no mention of the impending move by the State to impose what is tantamount to a State takeover of the system. The irony, in my opinion, is that now that we have worked hard to put this system in the right direction, the new education (not just fiscal as mistakenly presented in the Press) czar with veto power over the Superintendent and the BOE elected by the voters of Asbury Park will be coming in. Instead of a day late and a dollar short, this state will be years late and millions of dollars short. It remains to be seen how the elected officials who are accountable to the voters will react when they are overruled by an appointed bureaucrat elected by no one. That's just one man's opinion, though. Frank D'Alessandro, BOE member Yahoo! Groups
[AsburyPark] Last Night's BOE Meeting
At last night's BOE meeting, the state intervention team gave a 90 minute update on all aspects of their assistance to the school district from Early Childhood through High School. Of all 600 school districts in New Jersey, they are spending the most time and resources here due to the often dysfunctional, but fixable in their view, nature of our school system. Early Childhood and Elementary are the brightest spots here, and there are plans to ameliorate and remediate the secondary level with initiatives from our own Board of Ed, a Middle School Initiative and Grant from UMDNJ, the NJEA, and assistance provided by the State. There will be more transitional Summer school programs than ever before to keep the progress moving ahead. The Intervention Team, headed by Assistant State Commissioner of Ed Dr. Penelope Lattimer, as well as the Board expressed their admiration for the work being accomplished by the Acting Superintendent, James Parham. The three students who won the district-wide spelling bee, the Teachers of the Year, the Students who have been named to the Governor's School and the Monmouth County Student of the Month (a phenomenal young lady from our high schoolthere's a story about Carlita in today's Press) were all honored. Also last night the Board passed a corrective action plan to correct irregular business procedures that have needed correcting for a very long time. The present law firm was also re-appointed for another year with one abstention and one no vote. Due to a very long agenda and unusually long closed session, the meeting ended well past 11 PM. As usual, I must state that I do not speak for the Board. Frank D'Alessandro, BOE member Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
