Community Correspondence to the Berkeley Heights Board of Education – March through April 2023

Received from the OPRA Custodian 55 Days from the date of our Request

Last year the BOE stopped reading Board Correspondence at BOE Meetings, robbing the community of important perspectives from parents, students, and teachers. This year the BOE stopped including this correspondence as part of the minutes, only orally reporting on the correspondence and often with a spin on the subject matter. 

This is an example of how the Superintendent’s Central Administrators increased the OPRA burden – taking information that was once publicly presented and making it only available through OPRA.

As a result, we have begun to OPRA this correspondence and will provide community members with enough information to conduct their own OPRA Requests. 

Given the inability of this District to properly protect student information while at the same time withholding information about the Superintendent, BOE and Central Administration we will only present the topics. With that said, it appears that the names of high level administrators are now redacted from emails by the District.

Community Members wanting greater detail can email [email protected] to obtain a full copy of the correspondence.

04/27/2023 BOE Correspondence Topics

• Two emails to the BOE on discrepancies between the Business Administrators’ report to the BOE on OPRA requests and what the District published on their website (the District stopped publishing these documents after the discrepancies were pointed out)

• Email about the OPRA Custodians’ disclosure of children’s names

• Two emails about the OPRA Custodian and Superintendent’s trip to San Antonio for Conference.

• 3 Emails on Option II 

• One email on 60 days’ notice/performance evaluation of the Bussiness Administrator

• Four Emails on Courtesy Bussing

• Two emails from the BHAA on the Budget

• One email requesting that Eid al-Fitr be added to the school calendar

• Emails thanking Dr. Foregger and Gale Bradford for their questions on the Budget

• Email on payment in lieu of bussing

• Two Emails asking why the School Budget was not published on the website

• Three Emails from parents expressing concerns about cuts proposed in the school budget

• Email from a Parent asking for a copy of the the school budget.

• Email from parents with questions on specific line items on the school budget

• Email asking for clarification on why Mr. Hyman can vote on the school budget

• Four emails from BHPSNJ staff (twelve staff total) expressing concerns on the Superintendents plan to re-organize/school budget

If you want to write to the BOE, please consider sending an email to all eight members:

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

All Articles On Board Correspondence (2023)

All Articles on the 2023 Budget

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