John’s Notes on the 10/12/2023 BOE Meeting – “Misinformation” Edition
There’s a lot here to unpack and I am not going to get to it all in one article.
The first thing that struck me was Ms. Bradford’s comments about District Administrators talking about parents spreading misinformation about Building Thinking Classroom and Dr. Giordano’s response to my comments that parents made it seem that BTC was being applied to the entire high school and that it was not the reason for the declines. In the articles we have put out on the reasons for the declines, BTC was never mentioned as a MAIN reason but a factor complicating what was already a very complicated set of decisions on the part of the district. I posted about it last night:
I want to thank Ms. Bradford for letting on what Administrators are saying about parents in closed-door meetings.
In response to my comments at the BOE Meeting tonight, one administrator reported that parents’ misconception was that BTC was implemented throughout the High School and that parents blamed BTC for declining math scores. This is a rather astonishing comment, given the District held several meetings last year with parents about BTC.
He would do well to research what the District communicated to parents last year and to re-read our articles (if this is the misinformation he is referring to.) and point to exactly what was written that involved “misinformation”.
Building Thinking Classroom was an unmitigated disaster, and the District shut down student surveys about the math program. The BOE dismissed the survey BHCW conducted on Building Thinking Classroom involving parents while never reaching out to students or parents with an instrument of their own.
During her campaign, Ms. Penna played heroics and made dramatic efforts to convey she was working on the problem. Well, Ms. Penna got re-elected, Building Thinking Classroom is still here, and parents are still paying for tutors. This is all a matter of public record.
Dr. Varley indicated that the District was moving forward in using BTC just last month. A matter of public record.
Maybe Dr. Varley and her administrators need to get on the same page with what exactly is going on. Maybe our high level Administrators need to understand the source of information before they talk about parents behind closed doors.
In any event – in response to “parents are blaming BTC for the declines in Math scores”- here are the articles I wrote on the reasons for our declines:
It starts with a completely botched school reconfiguration
Moving teachers around en masse to grades they dont have experience in
Not tracking outcomes effectively
Focusing on Lawyers and Politics
Cutting off families from decisions and giving feeedback
And our spending priorities being admin and lawyers while kids couldn’t even get textbooks
I will be publishing a very LONG article on where the “misinformation” about our schools is coming from tomorrow.
In the articles about BTC – the focus was not just about the high school – it also involved the middle school and parents were speaking about their experiences with it and the difficulties their children were having. Articles also addressed research connected to BTC and questioned whether the District was really maintaining fidelity to the model.
In my comments during the meeting, I asked that in the future, Administrators and BOE Members be specific when they use the term “misinformation” because as we see in this example, we want to be crystal clear on who exactly is spreading it.
The Shared Services agreement with the town also landed on the Agenda and, curiously, this suddenly showed up after an email I sent the district on the Budget:
There appears to be a significant discrepancy between the adopted budget of the Berkeley Heights Board of Education and the Berkeley Heights Township budget.
Sources are: BHPS Adopted budget 2023-24 and Berkley Heights Township budget: https://www.berkeleyheights.gov/DocumentCenter/View/8200/2023-Adopted-Budget
Upon a close review of the adopted budget, I noticed some inconsistencies listed under shared services agreements:
The Berkeley Board of Education’s final adopted budget lists the following shared services agreements with Berkeley Heights township on page 99 of the adopted final budget (see attached)
We requested, via OPRA all Shared Service Agreements between the Township of Berkeley Heights and the Berkeley Heights Public School District. Compare the list of shared services indicated in these agreements with the list Berkeley Heights township maintains:
Shared services agreement with Comcast for use of Verizon
Shared services agreement on SRO with Berkeley heights police department
Shared services agreement on SLEO with Berkeley heights police department
Shared services agreement on SRO with Berkeley heights police department
Shared services agreement on SLEO with Berkeley heights police department
We received no copy of a shared services agreement with the Department of Public Works. Every elementary and middle school parent is aware of craters in the school parking lots that need to be fixed. The potholes at William Woodruff Elementary are the worst. The current solution is to mark each with fluorescent paint.
The only conclusion I can arrive at is the potholes are NOT being fixed as there is NO agreement in place to address this issue.
Background: It took multiple OPRA requests to obtain the fully adopted detailed budget. With every request, we were given an advertised budget in response to a request for a detailed budget by the newly appointed OPRA custodian Mr. Hopkins. So BHCW submitted an OPRA request to the NJ State dept of Education. After this budget (received from the state) was published, Mr. Hopkins provided us with the detailed budget.
I am concerned that neither the superintendent (Dr.Varley) nor Board Administrator (Julie Kot) shared the final adopted budget with the entire board.
According to the committee guidelines, the finance committee chair, Joy Young, and the committee must oversee the administration’s monthly management of the adopted budget. How were they overseeing the monthly budget management without sharing a detailed adopted budget with the entire board?
So the critical question is who is responsible and accountable for the accuracy of the information in our adopted budget?
Is it the Board administrator? Julie Kot’s resume and LinkedIn profile state she was the CFO for 62 Million dollar budget
Does the final accountability fall on the superintendent as she recommends the approval of the budget to the board?
This issue also raises the question of the many assistants that were approved and appointed for the Business Administrator during her term in BHPS. If the assistants and the OPRA custodian positions were created to delegate core responsibilities of the business admin role, why are we seeing these inconsistencies?
BHPS initially requested a health care cost adjustment with insufficient supporting information and later made adjustments to the health benefits account https://njedreport.com/letter-to-the-editor-my-school-district-is-deceiving-parents-and-taxpayers/
Who is responsible and accountable for correcting the adopted budget?
Is the finance committee providing the oversight it is supposed to? If not, then why have these committees?
Time and again, we have been in the dark about how our dollars are being accounted for. The most recent example involves subscription and courtesy Busing- numbers district employees are certifying as accurate to the state are NOT matching with the budget data, and there is NO response from President Angela Penna and VP Joy Young (finance committee chair) or Robert Ciancuilli (sits on finance committee) to resident questions or concerns on this issue.
Are District Administrators fulfilling their responsibility for the District’s budget? Without the detailed budget, how were Board Members confident enough to vote it through?
The district auditor, state comptroller, and NJ State Department of Education OFAC Office of Fiscal Accountability and Compliance need to investigate further if the District is unable to supply answers to these questions.
Given the history of non-response – if a meaningful response to these questions and concerns is not provided within 48 hours I will be submitting this email along with attachments to the above named agencies/offices.
Unfortunately, the District did not respond to my questions and this email was forwarded to state agencies so that I could get answers.
I brought the issue of Shared Services up during the meeting. During new New Business, Ms. Stanley made the statement that my remarks on OPRA requests connected to the budget were inaccurate (interestingly she said nothing about the more important issues surrounding Shared Services) – I wrote about this earlier today:
At the end of last night’s meeting, Ms. Stanley indicated that the statement I made about residents having to wait two weeks to obtain the budget was untrue.
It is true; in fact, it took longer than two weeks. One resident asked for the budget from the state and required an attorney and WEEKS of back and forth to obtain an unredacted copy. Another parent asked the same from the District, and getting the budget required a two week back and forth on “clarifying” what was meant when it would have been clear to anyone and should have been clear, at the very least, to the OPRA Custodian.
When the state released the budget to one parent (again taking more than two weeks) and BHCW published it, the District miraculously understood what was meant in the original OPRA request.
It all ended well, however, as the parent received a commitment from the state that they would end redacting line items from the budget as a practice, and that resident was given the unredacted budgets from 5 other Districts he then sent to us.
I will repeat the invitation I made last night. Instead of speaking in sound bytes, I welcome Ms. Stanley to discuss this issues with me and any other publicly in any forum of her choice and at any time – instead of using New Business (a portion of the meeting residents are not able to respond to) to make her comments.
There were positives to the meeting. The goals on proficiency were slightly better however that depends on whether the District is going to play the game on using new cut scores that would automatically show improvement or whether they are going to measure for the original cut score. I also did not love that the state scores were not used in all the measures but I think that may have to do with the break down of how math might be taught. Lastly – PSATs should NOT be an indicator for the District – this is not a measure on how well our schools are doing in teaching material. It was nice to see Dr. Varley finally present on this issue – although indirectly -some sign of taking responsibility for the issue.
There is more I and others are going to write on about that meeting, but that’s it from me today.
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