BOE Sets Four District, Two Board Goals for 2011-2012 School Year

The Fort Lee Board of Education held a special public work session Tuesday evening, the main purpose of which was goal setting for the 2011-2012 school year.

Susan McCusker of the New Jersey School Board Association (NJSBA) guided board members through the annual process of reviewing its roles and responsibilities and broke down the results of the board’s self evaluation before helping the school board develop its district goals and board goals for the coming school year.

“I want to make sure everyone is clear on what a district goal is and what a board goal is,” McCusker said. “Because we’re going to set both, but it doesn’t do much good if you don’t know the difference.”

She defined “district goal” as “a broad initiative that guides the business of the district throughout the year,” adding that typically no more than four district goals, which are set jointly between the superintendent and the board, are set each year.

“There must be a student achievement goal” included among those district goals, McCusker said. She also said that while “the board owns the [the district] goals,” half of the superintendent’s evaluation is “based on the progress toward those goals.”

Board goals, McCusker explained, are very different.

“That is supposed to come out of your self evaluation,” she said. “And it looks at the way you do your work. It looks at your process, your procedures and the way you perform. So you want to look at ways to improve your functioning as a board.”

McCusker then helped the board brainstorm a “What’s Wonderful” list, a “What’s in Progress” list and a list of “What Needs to be Worked On.”

Next came the district and board goals, of which the board agreed on four and two respectively.

In the end, the school board’s district goals list looked like this:

• Continue to work on closing the gap between student achievement for special education and regular education district-wide.
• Review and revise Language Arts curriculum for grades K-12 and Mathematics curriculum for grades K-8 to ensure student competence reaches or exceeds grade-level standards.
• Continue to address and resolve overcrowding, updating facilities and repairing aging infrastructure.
• Increase and actively encourage parental involvement.

After a lengthy discussion, McCusker and the school board then came up with the following two board goals:

• Improve communication and working relationship among board members focusing on confidentiality and trust.
• Set up a process for monitoring progress toward district goals.

“If you do this alone in one year, you’re going to be very happy,” McCusker told the board. “And you’re going to be doing your job better.”

Reaction to the board’s goals among the dozen or so Fort Lee residents in attendance ranged from disappointment at what wasn’t included to questions about how the public is going to know how the board is doing in terms of reaching those goals.

“It seems like there was a lot of conflicting analysis,” said David Sarnoff. “The board thinks they’re doing great, yet they don’t trust each other … I thought everything that was spread out was overwhelming compared to what I’ve witnessed over the past several years. I think one or two goals would be optimal to actually see more achievement.”

Sarnoff added that he thought a unified, district-wide reading curriculum by grade level was “something that in my opinion should just be a no-brainer off the bat. Why are we not even there?”

Diane Sicheri said she was disappointed that communication with the community was not among the board’s goals.

“It’s not like your budget passed by a landslide,” Sicheri said. “It’s very disconcerting to sit here as the public and hear you don’t want to communicate with us. Your communication skills with the public are very poor, and you don’t even put it up there as one of your board goals.”

Another Fort Lee resident, Paula Colbath, wanted to know what the next step is, now that the board has set its goals for the year, and how the public is going to know how the board is progressing toward them.

“I think if there can be some linkage for the public as to what your plan is in each of the things that you’re doing through the next year—how it fits into reaching your goals—it gives us more confidence that things are going along on a path, and you’re taking the baby steps to get there,” Colbath said.

Superintendent Raymond Bandlow pointed out that a “more formalized” approach to monitoring progress toward goals was in fact one of the goals the board set.

“There will be follow up on each of the goals or we will develop some strategies for implementing those goals and some timelines with some indicators of success,” Bandlow said. “That will be shared with the board. It will be things that we develop by administrators with communication with the board. As we move along through the year, we will see some indicators of success, and we’ll do some updates on that.”

Fort Lee Parent Presents Petition to Save School No. 1 Principal’s Job to School Board

Also at Tuesday’s meeting, Stefanie Stuart, the parent of a kindergartner at School No. 1 and the subject of a recent article on Patch, presented board members and school administrators with copies of a petition she recently started to save the job of principal Kristine Cecere, whose contract was not renewed by the board for the 2011-2012 school year.

“I’m brand new to the whole board of education and education system, and I’m hopefully trying to represent parents who want to have a voice and want to say something and do it in a respectful manner in the way it’s supposed to be done,” Stuart said before passing out signed copies of the petition. “And I feel also that if I want to be heard, the onus is on me to come to the meetings and to say things and to do so in a way that is mutually beneficial for everybody.”