Our Schools Are In Crisis: Give Back To The Taxpayers

To: The Englewood School Board

      Englewood Teachers Association

Stephen Brown (President of School Board) has publicly asked for suggestions from the Community on how to solve this problem. Mr. Brown, your training at the New Jersey School Boards Association should have prepared you for this situation. 

Local School Board - Responsibility

The local school board establishes 'policies' for the running of the local schooldistrict consistent with the "Statues" and "Regulations" applicable to all public schools.

Governance - The Law

• District board policies promoting student achievement
• ƒ District board training, disclosure and operation
• ƒ Ethics compliance
• ƒ District board policies, procedures and by-laws
• ƒ Standard school board practices
• ƒ Annual evaluative process
• ƒ District board/administration collaboration
• ƒ District board budget priorities
• ƒ District board communications

Englewood School Board members: you have clearly lost your way. Your training is flawed or you have not been very good students. It is time for you to find your way back to the responsibility of policy makers. This must be done for the sake of all children in the district, including your own.

Perfect Attendance incentive - Eliminate incentives. There is a supposed deficit. 

Incentives come in time of FEAST not FAMON.

Tuition reimbursement   should be suspended for an agreed upon time across the board for everyone, no exceptions. Settle the ones pending and freeze it.

AYP incentives for Superintendent should be suspended indefinitely. It should be reinstated when there is a clear improvement in the achievement of Englewood students, overtime, district wide.

Extended day - Policy should be created to bring this item in line with the state wide norm, which is approximately 6 hours and 55 minutes. This should be done across the board also.

There are many ways that the district may save taxpayers money. This includes the above "give backs to the taxpayers" that may not be considered as such by the teachers.

New School Board Members should have gotten this very important Training for Districts Entering Negotiations before voting on anything concerning employee salaries and benefits. That is called negotiating in good faith, Howard and Molly.

This is not the Board of EMPLOYMENT, it is the Board of EDUCATION!

                              How are the children?

Englewood Residents and all Concerned Citizens

Englewood Residents and All Concerned Citizens: 


Just in case you thought you were dealing with persons of integrity, take a look at this advertisement. Secretaries and Paraprofessionals are fighting for their very lives. They are under the mistaken assumption that they are in a fair fight and that the vote to accept contracts and to actually conduct a vote and ratify by resolution in a public session is something that will happen. Face it people, you have underestimated the chicanery of the people who hold the lives and education of your children in balance. Without following the laws of the state of New Jersey, the Board of Education in Englewood has already advertised your jobs. The Board of Education of Englewood is holding itself above the laws. They are making and acting on decisions made in closed session. They are making a mockery of the Open Public Meetings Act. We have a litany of other ways in which this and other laws have been broken. Is anyone listening?


Loretta Weinberg 
Governor Chris Christie
Acting Commissioner Cerf
Gordon M. Johnson 
Valerie Vainieri Huttle 
Mayor Frank Huttle III
Senator W. Lesniak, 
Senator Ronald I. Rice, 
Pascrell, 
Rothman, 
Michael Wildes, 
New Jersey State Naacp, 
American Civil Liberties Union, 
Clergy Council, 
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, 
Urban League 
and all other persons who claim to care should weigh in on this situation. For whom were the laws of the State of New Jersey written?


Delta T is already advertising the positions in question: https://acrobat.com/#d=WMisp47OwLM*v4Dl1Z6fvw

OPEN PUBLIC MEETINGS ACT...


Is a practice such as this coming soon to your town?

Our Schools Are In Crisis: To the Editors of FAST

• • 
    
    
    

    It is time for everyone to stop
    depending on hearsay. It is time to get involved. Do the research and stop parroting what people have told you because they are embarrassed by the mistakes they have made. Help them to understand that these mistakes must be dealt with at the source.
    
    
    Englewood Residents: Please do not allow the FASTarticle to inflame you or turn you from your course. It is written in earnest. I have not seen the authors at little more than one School Board meeting. They get their information from Board Members themselves. The content of the article demonstrates the disconnect between that group, the board and the rest of Englewood. You would think that people who have so much money and control would also have a passing acquaintance with the truth. 
    
    
    The Englewood Board of Education has failed us all. They have failed the residents of every single ward. People in all 4 wards must come out to the board meetings. Regardless of what anyone says the Englewood Public School District has been mismanaged. Outsourcing secretaries and Paraprofessionals will not raise test scores and will not bring the cost of educating students down. 
    
    
    There is a formula used in calculating cost per pupil that involves everything from the cost of teachers, food service, operations & maintenance, secretaries, nurses, principals, Superintendents, all salaries and finally facilities. Simpy stating the cost merely shows that having money does not equate to being informed. 
    
    
    Test scores will not go up until the school system begins to focus on students and not buildings. Test scores will go up when the focus is shifted to programs and curriculum instead of facilities and fat salaries and packages for teachers, not the lowest paid employees in the district. 
    
    
    Regardless of how the article suggests that persons have been involved in creating unrest, the fact remains that the board has been irresponsible with taxpayer dollars. They have folded to special interest groups and have maintained salaries and programs that are not in the best interest of children or taxpayers. They have created unsustainable programs that support apartheid education and that serve to polarize a school system and a community. 
    
    
    The text of this article proves the point. The article includes misinformation served to a population that has been duped by a group of people they trusted. Well, join the rest of us. We were fooled also. 
    
    
    To the Editors of FAST: A forensic audit will show that the people you elected and trusted to keep your taxes down have failed you and squandered your dollars. I challenge you to put your elected officials to the test. Sign the petition. Call for a forensic audit. In the big picture the issue of outsourcing is merely a diversion. Wake up and get involved in your Community. It is time for you to come down off the hill if you truly care.

    
    

    
    
  • Another thing, the cost of renting and renovating St. Cecilia School just increased the per student cost.
    

    
    
• 
  

Read the article: http://www.dontbankruptus.com/efast/?p=462&cpage=1#comment-230


                    How are the children? 

Separate and Unequal Still Alive and Thriving In Englewood Education

The problem of the polarization and apartheid education in Englewood is at the highest point right now. Some people may be very happy that the students in the Eagle Program have a new home in St. Cecilia's School. I am not. Even though the building has a cafeteria and a gym, it is still a substandard facility. Does the state of New Jersey know that EPSD has leased another substandard facility for our children? The building is not Handicap accessible. The lease states very clearly that any modifications that must be made to bring the building up to code must be paid for by the Board.

The terms in the lease are not favorable to the taxpayers of Englewood. It is also not favorable to the teachers and the children in the building.

Why are we paying over $300,000.00 a year to rent yet another substandard building? I thought we had a money problem. Is this further evidence of the spending problem? Why is it so important to keep the children separate? What happens if no more children transgress to a degree that they must be placed there? There are rumors that some students are there because they uttered curse words and others because their pants hung down below their boxers.

Behind a chain link fence are children capable of learning as
well as any others. Why?

In my humble opinion, Dr. Carlisle seems desperate to avoid another Sharpstown. That is his motivation, but what motivates the Board? Are there clandestine plans underway that will insure that St. Cecilia will always have students? Is this the true purpose behind the "Credit Recovery Program" and the "5 Year Plan"? This way there will always be empty seats for "school choice" students. The Department of Education has already asked the million dollar question of why so many African American and Latin American males are in special education. I would also like to know the answer to that question. How many of the students in St. Cecilia were exiled there because no attorney looked over the paperwork that put them there?

Inside all of the subterfuge we find another problem. The Law says that taxpayer money shall not be used to improve or renovate property that does not belong to the Board of Education. What about property that is owned by an Archdiocese? That is the epitome of mixing Church and State. There are repairs and renovations going on right now that are contrary to the law that ruled in the case below.

In Wildwood Crest, Cape May County the Board of Ed was simply improving a sidewalk owned by the City.

Petitioning Board contested the Department’s determination (resulting from an audit) that petitioner exceeded its authority in purchasing materials for the construction of a sidewalk on property not owned by the school district and in waiving the Borough’s obligation to pay contaminated soil removal costs in return for labor which was supplied for such sidewalk construction.

The ALJ found that the legislative scheme permits a school district to improve its own   

property but not that of the municipality. Therefore, the ALJ found that a school district may not expend public funds to construct a sidewalk improvement on property which is not owned by the board but is municipally-owned in order to jointly develop and construct a recreational field. Thus, the ALJ concluded that there is no statutory authority that would permit the Board to make the sidewalk improvement in question at its expense." 

Read more: http://www.state.nj.us/education/legal/commissioner/2000/73-00.pdf 

My Father would call this jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. I think I would like to see the paperwork that alters the Long Range Facilities Plan and adds this new substandard facility. Speaking of the contents of that Long Range Facilities Plan. How many schools do we have again?

Why?

Why is it so difficult for this Board of Education to follow the law? Two lawyers sit behind that long table during Board meetings.                




                        How are the children?  

Our Schools Are In Crisis

Englewood Residents: Study the Report Card for Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood, New Jersey. Note that there is no separation of the students listed into programs or academies. They are all Dwight Morrow High School students. There is no Eagle Academy and there is no Academy@Englewood. Everyone must let go of the fantasy so we may move on as a district. I am still trying to find the wisdom in the tendency to separate the student population. Apartheid education has no place in the City that collects my property taxes.

Englewood Teachers: I know that some of you have been allowed to play roles as if you live in feudal times. There is no room for nobles here in Englewood. Those days are over. I will personally institute charges against anyone that I witness saying that they object to teaching all children. Those of you who do not wish to TEACH IN THE NORTH BUILDING need to RECOGNIZE where you are. Let this post serve to put you on notice with a promise. The beginning is near. Expectations are set by teachers. Curriculum is driven or not driven, by teachers. Curriculum needs to be written and used by teachers. We must see that you will fight for more than your SALARY and BENEFITS. We must see that you fight for all of the children, not just the ones that you like. There is a climate of neglect at play here and it is HIGH TIME that the Board of Education, Teachers and Administration accept their own part in the malignant neglect.     

http://education.state.nj.us/rc/rc11/rcreport.php?c=03&d=1370&s=040