Does The Middle Matter?

Jun 20, 20231 Comment

The Berkeley Heights Public School District Continues to Fail At Equity where it Matters

For years now, Berkeley Heights Public Schools has had a language problem. That can be taken a couple ways – communication from our Superintendent is one-way and self-serving, and the Business Administrator orchestrates conversations to set up her own agenda – but in this case we’re talking literally. Our World Languages program, under the “guidance” of Supervisor Stephen Hopkins continues to suffer.

Due to low enrollment (for real, in this case), the Latin courses at Columbia Middle School and Governor Livingston were being taught by a single teacher. During the 2017-2018 school year, spurred (I believe) by the resignation of the teacher), we were informed that the district would be dropping Latin from the school curriculum, and an online course would be offered for those students who had already started the course progression. For us, this news came when our daughter was in 8th grade.

We understand, from the District’s standpoint, the difficulty in finding a teacher who would be willing to step into the role for the six years needed to move the kids who had started through their remaining years, particularly since this would mean successively fewer classes each year. The online course seemed to be a good way to bridge the gap. Unfortunately, as we were debating what to do, we found out that the online course wouldn’t fulfill the language requirement at the high school. Oops! With sadness, our daughter chose to drop Latin and start taking Spanish at GL.

Fast forward to last year, when students and families found out from the distraught French teacher – on the Friday before spring break – that the district was getting rid of French. Unlike Latin, French has enrollment numbers that are substantial enough to warrant full classes, despite claims to the contrary from Melissa Varley. French was saved due to the outpouring from the community, spearheaded by students themselves, and also, in part, because French is one of the more widely spoken languages, unlike Latin.

So why this rehashing of old news? Because our World Languages program is facing yet another cut. This time, Italian IV is on the chopping block. Honors Italian and AP Italian will remain, but as is SO typical for this district, the regular class will be eliminated. This focus on only our highest performers is so patently unfair and shows that “equity” is only a buzzword for those at the top – namely Stephen Hopkins, in this case. Oh, the irony of our DEI Supervisor making this decision!! (Interestingly, he is no longer listed as such on the Distict website.)

The students currently in Italian III were given the option of taking the Honors class, only to find that Honors will be combined with AP Italian and there will be approximately 28 students in the class. While it looks great on a college transcript to have four years of a language, students would be risking lower grades in exchange as they would be thrown into a packed class at a higher level. Despite reassurances by Melissa Varley that AP classes, or classes that are “necessary”, that have fewer than 10 students will ‘always be approved’, there doesn’t seem to be the same consideration given to those who are not at the top of the academic scale.

This community would do well to ask our BOE to hold the Superintendent accountable for seeing that ALL students have the same opportunities. Oh, wait! The majority of them don’t hold her accountable to anything, and have been more than happy to go-along-to-get-along as Stephen Hopkins has added resume-padding positions for his own resume.

Have you had enough yet?