7:00 Pm John F. Kennedy High School Presiding
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
MINUTES OF THE PATERSON BOARD OF EDUCATION REGULAR MEETING July 19, 2006 – 7:00 p.m. John F. Kennedy High School Presiding: Comm. Willa Mae Taylor, Board President Present: Dr. Michael Glascoe, State District Superintendent Sidney Sayovitz, Esq., General Counsel Comm. Joseph Atallo Comm. Alonzo Moody *Comm. Chauncey Brown Comm. Andre Sayegh, Vice President Comm. Jonathan Hodges Comm. Lawrence Spagnola Comm. Errol Kerr Comm. Daniel Vergara The Salute to the Flag was led by Comm. Taylor. Comm. Sayegh read the Open Public Meetings Act: The New Jersey Open Public Meetings Act was enacted to insure the right of the public to have advance notice of, and to attend the meetings of the Paterson Public School District, as well as other public bodies at which any business affecting the interest of the public is discussed or acted upon. In accordance with the provisions of this law, the Paterson Public School District has caused notice of this meeting: Regular Meeting July 19, 2006 at 7:00 p.m. John F. Kennedy High School 61-127 Preakness Avenue Paterson, New Jersey to be published by having the date, time and place posted in the office of the City Clerk of the City of Paterson, at the entrance of the Paterson Public School offices, and by sending notice of the meeting to the Al-Zaman, El Diario, the Italian Voice, the New Jersey Forum, the North Jersey Herald & News, and The Record. REPORT OF STATE DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT Dr. Glascoe: I will make my remarks brief. First of all, I would like to apologize to our School Board members and our public for the conditions of our facilities in our last School Board workshop session. We were in the T.V. studio and the temperature was quite low and uncomfortable for most of us, if not all of us. In addition to that, the refreshments that we had on hand for School Board members were compromised by a rodent. These things should not happen and we are going to work very hard to see that they won’t continue. We are looking at some creative ways for our workshop meetings. As you recall, I wanted to move the workshop meeting away from Eastside’s media center because it was not good for presentations. Staff would like to give you Page 1 7/19/06 information using PowerPoint and other vehicles and that room was just not conducive for that. We are exploring the idea of having our workshop meetings in this room and setting up either a square or just a line of chairs and tables for the School Board members right here on the floor, so that any presentations on the screen can be shown above us here and all the Board members would have to do is turn around to see that. Our presentations can be made right from the microphone that we use for our public comments. So we are considering trying to do some of those things to improve our meeting environment. The other announcement I would like to make, or the other bit of information that I would like to share with you, is that today I attended the Joint Committee on Public Schools in Trenton and I was one of about 10-12 Superintendents or their designees who spoke to the Joint Committee. The topic of conversation certainly was the flat budget request, facilities and, oddly enough, accountability. Most of the Superintendents, if not all, really touched on all three areas. I did have an opportunity to speak on behalf of the school district and I talked about the condition of our facilities and the crisis level of some of our facilities, namely Don Bosco, Eastside, School #5 and School #21 with their water filtration problems. We also talked about our long-range facilities plan and our projects that are still on hold. Hopefully, that was good information for the Committee. They seemed very enthusiastic. They seemed very much interested and there were times when they really took to task the Department of Education for their past and present practices with all of these situations. I also talked in terms of our need to move out of our central office and the things that we are doing to try to perfect that. As near as I could tell, this Joint Committee on Public Schools may be a support in helping us reach that goal. Thank you Mrs. Taylor. Comm. Taylor: I hope you had enough people understanding what you were talking about – the flat budget and also our facilities. As many people that can get around to talk about the facilities and the budget that we have to live with in order to educate our children, it is just not the way it should happen in a city like this. I thank you for having gone and spoken about it, but I think we have to back you up. All of us in the community will have to back you up. *Comm. Brown enters the meeting at 7:20 p.m. REPORT OF BOARD PRESIDENT Comm. Taylor: My report has to do with… Having gone to the graduations and having watched the children graduate and then going around the district to see if the children are attending some of the summer programs that we have, I am pleased that some children are taking advantage of it, but others are not. I think we should have some kind of measure that we can use to try to encourage those students who are supposed to come or that should be there to get into the classroom. I know our classrooms are hot. They are not conducive to us doing any real lessons. I would like us to be more encouraging to our children for summer programs that we have. PUBLIC COMMENTS It was moved by Comm. Sayegh, seconded by Comm. Kerr that the Public Comments portion of the meeting be opened. On roll call all members voted in the affirmative. The motion carried. Comm. Taylor: I would just like to remind us that we have three minutes per person and five minutes for an organization. I would like you to keep to it. Do we have a timer? Page 2 7/19/06 Ms. Irene Sterling: Good evening, my name is Irene Sterling and I am Executive Director of the Paterson Education Fund. I had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Glascoe today down at the Joint Committee. He did us proud. People asked us who he was and that was really nice. I am here tonight to talk about two things. One is Item A-1 on the agenda, which is the Stupski agreement. I was at the Board workshop two weeks ago and I had a chance to look at that Stupski agreement. It’s in the information package over here. I have pulled one out, so there are actually two running around here. I know the Board has seen this, so I am not handing you a copy of it tonight. You have had it, but the community hasn’t seen it. I think the Stupski agreement this year is instructive for what it means to be accountable. What it means to be accountable is, first of all, that there is mutuality. This Stupski agreement lays out responsibilities, both on the part of Stupski and on the part of the district, in terms of tasks and personnel, as well as dollars. There is nothing in this document that leaves things unclear or cloudy. It’s very clear. Things may be renegotiated as time goes on, but we start with a very clear picture and very clear goals of where we are going and how we are going to assess that. I am also very pleased that the agreement calls for both Stupski and the district to report on what Stupski is doing and I look forward to that report. I also think there is a very both troubling but true statement in the Stupski agreement this year and it occurs on the section under organizational and environmental capacity. Here is our partner who has invested literally millions of dollars in our district over the last four years. It says, “The Paterson School District could be described as having a culture of compliance. This trait is a direct result of the district being under state control for the past 14 years and the district must be intentional about shifting the culture from one of compliance to one of accountability.” Part of what I think is important for the Board to recognize and for our community to recognize is that what the Stupski agreement points out is that accountability means being very clear what the targets are, how they are going to be measured, and how we are going to work on it together with the assumption that we are going to meet those high targets. It doesn’t talk about it in a way that is compliant that says we hope we meet this vague goal out here and that is really the difference. We have spent a lot of time with the State Department talking about very unclear goals and very unclear ways of how we are going to go there. So I thought this was extremely useful, not only for the Board to really contemplate what this means to be in this kind of relationship, but for us to look for that kind of relationship from the community as we see how we are going forward. The other concern that I wanted to bring to you was about the discussion that you had about the test scores.