Board of Ed President Provides Updates on PreK, Superintendent Evaluation, Student Transfers

The Board is striving to consistently integrate Pre-K topics into our committee discussions, recognizing that our Pre-K program will often be the first point of engagement for families entering our school district. The program has exponentially increased over the years with more than 8 locations, including Montrose. Thank you to board members [Liz] Callahan and [Jeff] Bennett for passionately encouraging this effort with the district and the Board. I have asked our committee chairs to include Pre-K as a monthly agenda item to remind us to discuss timely topics and provide ongoing oversight as needed, especially with respect to our policies, pop-up issues and necessary caregiver communications. Also, thank you Superintendent Mr. Bing, the Director of Early Childhood Education Mr. Leroy Johnson and team for organizing and hosting our first Pre-K and Kindergarten Town Hall May 16th.

As part of our board duty, we have completed our evaluation of our Superintendent in his first year, which will be presented to him formally in our closed Exec Session after our Recognition and Retirements meeting on Thursday, June 5.

We reviewed the rubric for the internal student transfers process, which incorporates protocols for III transfers. It’s important to ensure that the rubric and accompanying worksheet reflects the 5124 policy changes from 2023. The 5124 policy changes intentionally removed the language (and I quote) “hardship does not include childcare needs, transportation and work hours,” so that they could be considered when reviewing transfer requests on a case-by-case basis. It’s important to recognize that our Intentional Integration Initiative brings its own challenges for families that zoned schools did not – we need to approach these challenges with as much empathy for families as we can. We will be discussing this further in the upcoming Policy and Rutgers June committee meetings, including the idea of making the rubric public, so that the community understands how transfer decisions are made.

We have asked our Business Administrator and FFT committee to revitalize our legal bill tracking efforts from 2023, because our board has a fiscal responsibility to stay on top of our legal spend and liabilities. Thank you to Board member [Deirdre] Brown for bringing this need up earlier in the year. The Board’s legal fees do not have its own line item in the district’s overall budget. In the 2022-23 school year, FFT uncovered an exponential increase in spend and the central office analysis was never completed. This work needs to continue with comparisons from 2024 and 25, so that we can understand the trends and find ways to reduce costs. Thank you to our Business Administrator [Imani Moody] and team for taking on this integral task at a time when we know the forthcoming years will be challenging financially.