4/16/13 - Barnegat Township School District

Ms. Sawicki: Ok, this is defined as K-3 if you want to get very specific but might I add that youare not only cutting teachers in K-3 if I am mistaken please correct me. But as we were told lastmonth the cuts will be happening throughout elementary which in this district is K-5. The classsizes are already tremendous.Mrs. Olker: We will have your economic questions dealt with by Ms. LaGuardia about therefinancing of the bonds and the money back from the solar and energy savings and then Ms.Wood will deal with the questions on the early childhood.Mrs. LaGuardia: On the question for bond refinance, the bonds become eligible for refinancingand just last year the debt service was refinanced and the savings helped to offset the overallincreases of the operational services of the general budget. On the money savings energyprogram which is the ESIP program it is currently being used to offset the costs incurred to makeenergy upgrades to sustain energy savings.Mrs. Becker: Ms. Sawicki, your first question about the bonds, you misunderstand, it is not thebond that increased the budget significantly that we were not anticipating. It was the SDAassessment on the free money that Barnegat got many years ago to build all these buildings andafter several years the Governor then decided that it was technically a loan and he surcharged us$600K last year and $1M+ this year so it is not the bonds, I just want you to understand. It is theSDA assessment on the grants which turned out to be a loan in the eyes of the Governor.Ms. Wood: Ms. Sawicki I just wanted to recognize the research you did and if you wouldn’tmind dropping off a copy of that research tomorrow morning because I would be happy torespond to your request and post the response on the district website. I took notes as best I couldhowever you presented us with a lot of data and research. If you don’t mind dropping that off atyour earliest convenience we will respond to your questions because it is important. Thank you.Christine Costello, 51 Spruce Circle South: I am a teacher but more importantly a mother. As amember of the Donahue community, a Barnegat taxpayer, a public school teacher and a motherof two young children, I am disheartened and concerned at the fact that the teachers and supportstaff are being cut at such a critical time in the education of our children in New Jersey.According to a report generated by the State of New Jersey, the Donahue School outperformedonly 21% of its equitable peer schools in academic achievement. The state classifies this scoreas lagging performance. More alarming is that the score separates us by only 1% of beingsignificantly lagging. Regarding student growth we scored 34% compared to our peers whichalso lag in comparison to equitable school districts.In my professional and personal opinion this performance ranking is not acceptable. These arecurrent results with our children receiving valuable daily instruction by our hard-workingteachers in small class sizes at the Donahue School. The state of New Jersey has set a threepercent performance goal to show growth and proficiency in all demographic areas. My concernis that our current scores with our current class size are lagging so if the class sizes increase howare our students going to achieve this goal and how are they going to perform academically.Barnegat Township Board of Education Meeting MinutesApril 16, 2013 Page 11