Manalapan-Englishtown School District and BOE "Focus" Goals

The Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District Board of Education held a workshop meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 9 to discuss the board, district, and superintendent goals. While the goals of the superintendent were discussed in closed session, the public were allowed to hear what the district and board will be concentrating on in the upcoming school year. 

Assistant Superintendent Joanne Monroe said that the keyword for the district for the 2011-2012 school year will be “focus”. Monroe said the district will “focus curriculum development, professional development, and technology development to increase the achievement of all students and seek to close the achievement gap.” 

The local, state, and national indicators are what the district uses to measure student achievement. However, this year the district will be more specific rather than speaking in generalized terms. By concentrating on developing the three major areas that affect student achievement, better results will follow, according to Monroe.

“So things that sound like they would be nice for the kids, but they are not necessary to achievement we are going to push aside,” Monroe said. 

Board President Michele Stipelman asked Monroe what would be eliminated, and Monroe explained that any unproductive classroom activities and field trips may be more time-consuming than they are worth in regards to bringing the district where it needs to be in terms of achievement. By eliminating what proves to be unhelpful, Monroe said she wishes to train the teachers to devote more class hours to writing, a necessary skill that many of the students are lacking. Additionally, Monroe said that every subject will focus more on writing.

The second goal of the district is to provide more students with access to the most rigorous curriculum in math and language arts. This goal was a focus of the board last school year, and Monroe said she wants to continue making strides in this area. 

Monroe said she wants to do a lot of work this year with teachers in “cluster classrooms”, which are basically classrooms for more advanced students (state-wide testing scores qualify students for a cluster classroom). There are now “cluster classrooms” in grades 2 through 5, and three different types: a math cluster classroom, a language arts cluster classroom, and a math and language arts cluster classroom. 

“We are really putting the push on to give every child who has the potential for more the opportunity to do more,” Monroe said. 

In terms of the goals for the board of education, they will continue to support the Professional Learning Communities initiative which will focus on increasing student achievement for all students and seek to close the achievement gap by increasing access to the most rigorous curriculum in math and language arts for all students, as the district goal previously stated. 

The board will also evaluate the district budget and make critical decisions within the guidelines of the state budget cap, as well as continue to have open lines of communication with central administration to ensure that accurate information is available to the board.

Stipelman said that curriculum is the most important part of what the board of education does and said that a goal of the board this year should be to discuss curricular issues more often. The board agreed to set aside one meeting a month to devote to curriculum. 

The board also talked about being more accessible to the community and will put together monthly highlights which will be posted on their Web site.