Books, Salt and Bricks at the BOE

Three sculptures by Ash Lumpkin, CHS '12, are in the Board room.

Three sculptures by senior Ash Lumpkin are currently on display at the Board of Education building. They stand in the center of the board room, a visible presence even when the room is full. Superintendent Brian Osborne said on Monday night at the Board of Education meeting that Lumpkin has been accepted to The Cooper Union to study art. The three works include a table and chair; a stack of Bibles and salt; and bricks and sandbags. Lumpkin explains in a handout that the first two works consider "preservation." The third work is "an exploration of the interaction between two different, but equally important, materials, one place on the other."

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OP-ED: Mind the Gap

South Orange Trustee Michael Goldberg presents his position that the school tax levy should not be raised above 2%.

Last year, South Orange residents were quite surprised to receive their tax bills, which showed an increase of 4% in the School portion of the bill.  With the average homeowner already paying over $15,000 per year in property taxes and the school taxes making up the large majority of our bill, that resulted in a material increase during a year when people were still seeing flat or declining incomes.  Last November, I along with other members of the Board of School Estimate made it crystal, crystal clear that the Board of Education should not raise taxes any higher than 2% going forward.  While I am well aware that the 2% “CAP” imposed by the State ALLOWS for increase greater than 2% (due to exemptions, cap banking etc), that does not mean …

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BOE Unanimously Approves 2012-13 Budget

The budget now moves on to the Board of School Estimate.

The Board of Education unanimously approved the preliminary budget for the 2012-2013 school year at its March 12 meeting. The budget now goes to the Board of School Estimate, which is responsible for taking action to levy the 2012-2013 school tax. Budget documents, including a PowerPoint overview, are available on the District Website. For an in-depth discussion of the budget from the March 5 Board of Education meeting, read here. The Board of School Estimate met on March 14 to establish an understanding of the Board of Education’s proposed budget. Action will be taken when the Board of School Estimate reconvenes at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 28, 2012 to levy the 2012-2013 school tax. Both meetings will take place at the Board of …

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OP-ED: Deleveling, the International Baccalaureate, and Implementation

The writer is a candidate for the Board of Education.

On March 5, the South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education voted to adopt the Superintendent’s Middle School Transformation proposal. As part of this plan, middle school Social Studies and Science will be completely deleveled in all grades and Language Arts will be completely deleveled in all grades except for a small cluster of 8th graders (comprising 12-15%) of students who will take 9th grade Language Arts starting in the 2013-14 school year. We will also be adopting the International Baccalaureate with its accompanying curricular, assessment and pedagogical changes. I support an upwards-pushing leveling system with honors classes and thus disagree with the Board of Education majority on complete deleveling. However, as someone who, if …

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Mary Mann

6:14 pm on Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Ted, The out of town comments were repetitive and were flooding the site. There are two other IB-related pieces recently posted on Patch. Some of the out-of-town comments are still resident there.   more ›

NJ School Board Elections: These Holdouts Are Sticking With Spring

NJ Spotlight: Roughly 10 percent of school districts across the state have not moved elections into November.

They have become the holdouts, the handful of New Jersey school districts that have gone against the grain and decided to keep their school elections in April, at least for now, according to a report in NJ Spotlight. Under a law passed this winter, districts were allowed to move their elections to November as a way to boost voter interest. What started as a trickle quickly became a torrent: 468 districts -- nearly nine in 10 -- have made the move. The big lure was that those making the switch would not be required to put their annual budgets to the voters, as long as they stayed below the state’s 2 percent property tax cap. But for a scant handful of districts, just 71 in all, that apparently wasn't enough. [In Essex County, those holdouts…

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Anonymous

8:42 am on Tuesday, March 6, 2012

That's quite a stretch. Don't think the governor was ever going to be on-board about giving local taxpayers the right to turn down a Charter School, and he doesn't need this law to justify his position.   more ›

Deadline to File for School Board Election Is Feb. 27

Gleason will not run again; Payne-Parrish and Eastman will, joined by two newcomers — so far.

If you want to throw your hat in the ring to run for school board, you'd better hurry. The School District of South Orange and Maplewood nominating process for school board elections ends at 4 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 27. Currently, the Board of Education election is scheduled for April 17, 2012. “There are three seats open for candidates to fill,” announced Business Administrator and Board Secretary Cheryl Schneider. “A full term on the school board runs for three years.” Those three seats are currently occupied by Jennifer Payne-Parrish, Wayne Eastman and former Board of Education President Mark Gleason. Payne-Parrish and Eastman have both filed to run again. Gleason — a former Board President — said he had enjoyed his time on the board but …

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South Orange Declines Moving Board of Education Elections in 2012

The BOT says its unfair to move it during an election cycle, plus Board of School Estimates still needs to be worked out.

On Wednesday, the South Orange Board of Trustees (BOT) declined the opportunity to join their Maplewood counterparts in moving the Board of Education elections to November for 2012.  The BOT decided that it wasn’t a good time to move the elections with the current election cycle already started.  In addition, the BOT’s preference was for the BOE to move the elections by their own resolution, not forced by the municipalities. According to the New Jersey School Boards Association, since Gov. Chris Christie signed Assembly Bill No. 4394, allowing municipalities to move their Board of Education elections from May to November, into law on Jan. 17, more than 40 percent of New Jersey school boards with April budget and board-member elections have…

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Public Comments from March 5 Board of Education Meeting

A transcript, by Patch staff, of public comments made by a South Orange resident at a South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education meeting.

  Transcribed on 4/18 March 5 SOMSD Board of Education meeting, two-minute public comment: Rusty Reeves, South Orange I have spent my career to date as a psychiatrist caring for poor people, mostly poor black people, including prisoners and troubled adolescents.  What we have in this deleveling drama is displacement. We don’t want to acknowledge the reason for black kids’ underachievement, which is broadly culture and single-parent families. And so we find something more acceptable to blame. In this case, it’s the old trope of white racism whether inadvertent or purposeful. Although a school district has to strive to help all its students, and I would love to see black kids perform better for both altruistic and, frankly, selfish reasons, …

Special Education PTO Meets

The group's first meeting of the year is dedicated to organization and parent interests.

Wednesday, Sept. 30, saw the first of five scheduled meetings to be held by the Special Education Parent-Teacher Organization this school year. The group, which met in the Board of Education meeting room, used last night’s gathering for introductions and general information. Executive Board member Mary Beth Walsh expects that two of the four meetings that remain will be informal, noting that the PTO will invite speakers for the two “informative” meetings. The group’s goal is “promote the welfare of the special education student by providing parents with the tools and information they need to work collaboratively with the school district and to be more effective advocates for their children,” according to their Web site. Walsh noted that …

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Osborne Gives H1N1 Update

No more swine flu testing, but same precautions are recommended.

In advance of a countywide summit on H1N1, or swine flu, preparation next week, South Orange and Maplewood school district Superintendent Brian Osborne provided a quick update at the Sept. 21 school board meeting. There has been no uptick in flu-like symptoms at the schools, Osborne said. Nonetheless, parents and students are advised to maintain previously suggested preventive measures. “Wash your hands a lot more than you usually do,” Osborne said. Osborne said the Federal Centers for Disease Control has changed its guidelines from keeping children home from school. Previously, the recommendation was to have children displaying flu-like symptoms out of school for 4 to 7 days. The recommendation now allows them to return to school 24 hours…

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