School Board Meetings to Move to Wednesday Nights

Beginning in September, Lawrence Township Board of Education meetings will be held on Wednesday evenings, Laura Waters, board president, announced at the school board meeting that took place on Monday (July 9).

Waters said that moving the meetings from Monday nights to Wednesday nights will give board members more time to review meeting agendas, which typically do not become available until late in the afternoon on the preceding Friday.

“Starting in September we’ve going to move our meetings to Wednesdays, so that we don’t run into the situation where we get the agenda on Friday and we don’t have much time to do any back-and-forth [and] get questions answered by Monday night,” she explained.

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Audio from Monday’s school board meeting can be found on the school district’s website.

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Also at the meeting, Superintendent Crystal Lovell presented to the board the district’s revised violence and vandalism report for the first half of the 2011-2012 school year. Information that was included preliminary data for the period beginning with the start of school in September and ending Jan. 1.

The finalized numbers released by Lovell Monday showed decreases in several categories: overall incidents of violence dropped from 53 to 51; incidents of harassment, intimidation and bullying decreased from 39 to 37; incidents involving weapons went from two to 1; the number of student offenders dropped to 62 from 63; and the number of student victims decreased by one to 38.

Incidents of vandalism, meanwhile, increased from three to five, while the number of incidents for which police were notified went from two to three.

A copy of the revised violence and vandalism numbers can be found in the media box above.

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Among the personnel actions taken by the board during Monday’s meeting were the reassignment of some existing staff and the hiring of several new teachers to fill vacancies created by retirements, resignations and internal transfers.

The board also accepted the resignations of district grants manager Jennifer Polakowski and Pamela Hernandez, supervisor of special education for pre-school through sixth grade. Both are leaving the district for new jobs, with Hernandez taking a position as principal of one of the elementary schools in Hamilton Township.

The meeting agenda – a copy of which can be found in the media box above – includes a full list of the personnel moves, instructional/student services items and school business actions approved by the board on Monday.

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During one of the public participation segments of the meeting, Lawrence High School alumna Katherine Welsh urged the board and district officials not to make any cuts to the district’s Latin language program. During the May 14 board meeting, several Lawrence High School students expressed their concern to the board that Latin IV might not be offered in the 2012-2013 school year due to low enrollment in the class.

“I simply wanted to share my positive experiences with the Latin program here at the high school and the middle school, and to urge the district and the board to continue supporting the Latin department and offering all levels of Latin to Lawrence students,” said Welsh, who served as salutatorian at the and who now attends Princeton University.

“I really found the Latin program was phenomenal here. I really got a lot out of it and I thought every level was challenging and very appropriate,” Welsh told the board Monday. “I know it’s widely known that students with a background in Latin often do well in critical thinking and vocabulary sections of standardized testing, and I really did find that Latin was helpful when I was taking the SAT… But I’m here more to emphasize that Latin gives students so much more than good SAT scores. When you provide students with the opportunity to study Latin, you’re providing them an opportunity to engage in a very rich, interdisciplinary program of study in which you’re learning about language and literature and culture and history…”

Welsh was advised that the board’s curriculum committee would take her remarks into consideration.