Manalapan-Englishtown BOE Rethinks Financing Natural Helpers

The question of funding Natural Helpers, a peer guidance counseling program at , was raised again at the Aug. 16 board of education meeting. Former Board President Donna Formosa voiced her concern for implementing the program, which would run the district $15,009, a fee which Assistant Superintendent Joanne Monroe confirmed on Tuesday.

This is the same price the program cost in 2009, which was $3,000 less than it had been the previous year because a grant had decreased; it is roughly $500 per person, according to Monroe. 

MEMS Principal Robert Williams and guidance counselor Rosalyn Goldsmith visited the board at their : a select group of students, chosen by their peers, receive a comprehensive training on how to help their classmates deal with bullying and other issues.

Board member Diane Bindler said she had spoken to Williams about the program, which has been in the district for 19 years, and felt that using and funding the program would be easier than creating another anti-bullying program from scratch. 

“After listening to [the presentation], I think pretty much everyone on the board said, ‘You know, that sounds like a pretty good thing.’ And then it get’s out to the public and they just hear bits and pieces and they say, ‘Oh my God, $20,000 we can’t afford that,’” Bindler said. “So, I think it’s important for people to understand what the program really does. We saw the presentation, but unfortunately the rest of the district didn’t. So if there’s anyway that maybe we can get more information out there I think that that would be really helpful.” 

Board President Michele Stipelman did not feel as strongly about the Natural Helpers. After further research on Natural Helpers, Stipelman said that there is very little information about it on the internet, and very few districts currently use the program. Furthermore, the program is about 30 years old. 

“Since then, a lot of other programs have come out that are more current, more modern and maybe less expensive that we could possibly be looking into,” said Stipelman.

Superintendent John J. Marciante said that there is not a vacuum for the program because MEMS has a lot of other helpful programs such as a peer-mediation program and the Ambassador program.

“It’s not like there’s nothing happening there. There are things in place across the board,” Marciante said. The superintendent also said that Natural Helpers should not be highly regarded for it’s “uniqueness”, and that it could easily by replaced by another program. 

During public comment Formosa said that she felt the district should not pay for such an expensive program when so many cuts have been made to many student programs over the years.

“If [the programs] weren’t cut, the kids had to pay for them. I don’t believe that when kids were paying for programs that they paid for Natural Helpers,” Formosa said. “Also, a lot of programs were cut because they weren’t going to be self-funded. This program was never looked at, and now you’re talking about an exorbitant amount of money for a small number of children.”

Part of what makes Natural Helpers so expensive is a weekend retreat, according to Monroe, and if the board wants to keep Natural Helpers they will have to pay for the retreat which Monroe described as “the cornerstone of Natural Helpers.”

Board member Annamarie Galante suggested that the district create their own in-house anti-bully council, since almost all school employees are receiving intense anti-bullying training due to New Jersey’s new anti-bully statute which was signed into law on Nov. 22, 2010.

The law, touted as the toughest anti-bully legislation in the country, takes effect this September. The law requires that all school employees be trained on how to recognize a bully and report all incidents of harassment. All public teachers must complete at least two hours of instruction on harassment, intimidation or bullying prevention, and administrators and board of education members must also take programs on bullying. Principals are also required to appointe a staff member to each school as an anti-bullying specialist, who will chair a school safety team which will create a positive atmosphere at the school and recognize patterns of harassment. For more information on the anti-bullying legislation, click here. 

“I am glad to hear that you are going to look at alternate programs. It is something good for the kids, but also as now just a tax-payer and not a board member I think it is also important to remember that you have now two more roofs left do,” Formoso said.