BOE Meeting 9/8

This is a partial summary -- just some highlights, really -- from last night's Board of Education meeting.

We started by honoring this year's winners of the Ashby Award, music teacher Joel Brickman, and Kerry Huntington, Supervisor of Special Programs. It was nice to hear Dr. Fishbein's descriptions of how respected and appreciated they are by students, teachers, staff and parents.

Dr. Fishbein gave an "opening of school" report, which included enrollment figures by school:
(number in parentheses is the change from Sept 07)
Glen 28 (-12)
Hawes (0)
Orchard (+6)
Ridge 475 (-11)
Somerville 511 (+6)
Travell 418 (-2)
Willard 467 (+16)
Total Elementary 2633 (+3)
BF 690 (+23)
GW 682 (+46)
Total Middle School 1372 (+69)
RHS 1672 (+2)
Grand Total 5677 (+74)

There was some discussion about growing enrollments and how the district is projecting that within a few years, we will be looking at 1500 middle school students and 2000 students at the high school.

We reviewed the Facilities Committee's current proposal for expansion of GW middle school. The net result would be 6 new classrooms, 5 new SGI (small group instruction) rooms, new media center, computer lab and full-size gym. The plans will be available online shortly, and members of the Facilities Committee will be holding a special meeting for GW parents to give feedback or ask questions. I'll post the date/time here after it's been scheduled.

There was a host of approvals of business items including the calendar for 2009-2010, curriculum, field trips, human resources items, finance items. We voted to approve the new agreements with the REA (teachers) and RAES (secretaries).

We had a discussion about Student Activity Fees. Ridgewood's activity fees are $60 for middle school students and $75 for high school students, for anyone who participates in extracurricular activities, such as clubs and sports. We began collecting the Activity Fee in 1995. We bring in about $100,000 in restricted funds, which are used for tax relief. If we were not to collect those fees, we would need to make cuts to replace those funds. There was some discussion as to our enforcement of the fee. We can probably do a better job of ensuring that fees are collected from all students who participate -- $100,000 seems a little low, based on our schools' population and how active our students are. One of the points I made was that Ridgewood's fees are relatively low compared to other districts, some of which have activity fees in the $200-per-student range. In addition, some districts charge per activity, with a "menu" of prices. For example, football has one price, Spanish club has another price, etc. I personally think that system is not a good idea as it can force students to make choices based on price. It would be sad if a student wanted to participate in a club, but felt they could not because it was too expensive. In our system, we want our students to be active and involved as much as they want.

We did not have an Executive Session last night, so the meeting actually ended around 9:30. Our next meeting will be our Board Retreat next Monday night, where we'll discuss how we operate as a Board as well as goals for the 2008-09 school year.