NJ Education Report

N.J. school districts will have access to student PARCC results tomorrow morning. See the Star-Ledger, NJ Spotlight, and the Asbury Park Press.  Individual districts will decide when to share the results with parents. Next year, families will receive results before the end of the school year.

North Camden has never had a high school, but on Tuesday night Camden Superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard announced that Mastery Charter Schools will remodel the old Pyne Point Middle School and open it as a renaissance high school for all neighborhood students.

“If you talk to these families, they’ll tell you their voices weren’t always valued,” Camden City School District Superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard said Wednesday after the community meeting where the announcement was made.
Some parents and students teared up at the news, Rouhanifard said, while other 7th and 8th graders in attendance openly discussed their options for their future.

Here’s NJTV’s Mary Alice Williams’ interview with Newark Superintendent Chris Cerf, focusing on “the sharp contrast to the contentious reign of departed schools superintendent Cami Anderson.” This year “the  district has been relatively quiet and peaceful, even as [Cerf] continues to oversee the controversial citywide enrollment system and helps the district move forward in the slow process leading to the return of local control.”

From NJ Spotlight: what will be the impact on NJ schools of the newly-authorized Every Child Achieves Act? Also see coverage from The Record.

The Asbury Park Press reports that the Senate Education Committee passed a bill that would “eventually” consolidate N.J.’s smallest school districts: ” The legislation, S-2727, would establish a 16-member Task Force on School District Regionalization. New Jersey has more than 600 school districts to educate 1.37 million public school students, which leaves the average district with fewer than 2,400 students.”

NJ Spotlight looks at several special education bills that would affect the state’s 200,000 special needs students.

Upscale North Jersey districts are wondering whether A.P. courses are too stressful.

The Record reports on continuing fiscal problems in Paterson: “the school district spent $19.7 million on employees’ prescription costs in the fiscal year that ended June 30, more than a 50-percent increase compared to the $12.2 million spent three years ago, officials said.”

And, from Jeff Bennett, “Sciarra & Tractenberg, LLP, the law firm that poses as a social justice organization called ‘the Education Law Center,’ is threatening to sue the state if it doesn’t give the Abbott districts billions more. This time the Education Law Center is demanding that the state borrow billions in order to pay 100% of the costs of school repair and construction in the Abbott (SDA) districts.”