Parent Concerns About Budget, Survey and OPRA Violations

-Karin Sicoli

Our Berkeley Heights BOE’s first job is to “protect the herd” not to be mistaken for protecting: students, teachers, substitute teachers or parents.  As it turns out, stakeholders are a necessary evil only. Protecting the herd, themselves, is their first concern.  A question, by a board member was asked, about how this reduction in staff would impact students and our superintendent feigned to not understand the question and then quickly dismissed it.  Questioning is discouraged.

One board member loves to tirelessly throw in platitudes about an undefined yet seemingly acute concern about “equity”. This is offensive when these empty words are disconnected from our students and their learning in the classroom now. Listeners, last night, endured nauseating drivel from board members as teachers’ positions were at stake and student learning was in jeopardy of being cut.  The dismissive attitude from our BOE should concern every resident in Berkeley Heights. 

This BOE passed a nearly $63,000,000 annual education budget while giving the ax to two supervisor positions that both teachers and students pleaded for during the last two public meetings.  Those informed and brave appeals fell on deaf ears.  Watching this play out was like watching a general, on the frontlines, in the heat of the battle, requesting for support but being completely ignored by the spineless politicians in their ivory towers waiting to opine on matters that are disconnected from the battle at hand. 

We all learned that despite a huge budget we could not manage to keep what the teachers and students need yet ironically we were told that this BOE has a limitless budget for legal expenses.  Priorities are not student focused but inward focused; it is a “we need to protect ourselves and our agenda” approach that propels this board’s actions.

I got home at 11pm after waiting over three hours to speak at last night’s board meeting. I went up to speak publicly for two reasons. First to expose blatant OPRA violations by our OPRA custodian and secondly to express my strong opposition to a planned DEI survey of our HS and MS students in May. I was quickly reminded to “not use personnel names!”  I am not clear why I need to protect our OPRA custodian’s identity, Stephen Hopkins, who proudly identifies as a “he/him/his” when he failed to protect my children’s identities and another student’s identity by not redacting their names.  His only excuse, when asked about this violation, was: “human error!”  As of this morning, we have not been told how this OPRA violation will be fixed.  The BOE shows zero concern, perhaps because they can draw on the limitless legal support and protection they have access to? 

The members on the board looked like they were suffering as they “endured” listening to me, a concerned parent, talk about how my children and their names had been exposed.  Despite this data violation, they were not bothered one bit by the planned May survey of our middle and high-school students. Our students will be asked about their sexuality, their parents’ income and their own mental health and religious preferences. I tried to show how foolish it will be to have someone who is sloppy and unconcerned with data management to be overseeing such an exercise.

Parents do not have answers to the most basic questions about this survey such as:

• Who created and designed this survey?
• Who will be administrating the results? 
• Who has access to this data?
• What is the goal? 
• What is a viable response rate 20%? – action will be taken on a 20% response rate?
• Since this is an optional survey, those who answer are a self-selected group and that would influence or skew the outcome.
• How much did this cost the district?
  

I have been going to our BOE meetings for one year and I have learned that protecting the herd is their most important agenda item. Parents’ concerns are dismissed. Teachers’ concerns are dismissed.  I’m a positive person who wants to be engaged with my kids’ education.  Getting a repeated stiff arm from our BOE and our superintendent makes me wonder, what – if not our children’s education – are they concerned with? 

My plea is for the BOE to not go forward with the survey in May.  I encourage every parent to warn their MS and HS students about this survey!

If this survey is allowed to happen then I can only imagine that this will be the first of many surveys and questions where the school will feel free to ask about our children’s sexuality, parents’ income and anything else they are curious about that will then be exploited to further an agenda most parents disagree with.

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