Ed. Note: This is an op-ed from Berkeley Heights Community Watch.

In 2022, Berkeley Heights Community Watch (BHCW) raised concerns about proficiencies directly to the Berkeley Heights Public Schools Superintendent of Schools and received surface-level responses that did not address important questions.

In 2023 BHCW provided a scathing analysis of the most recent NJ DOE performance reports (released after our initial email) that demonstrated BHPS carried the highest per pupil with the lowest performance and most significant declines post-COVID when evaluated against six comparable schools. This was soon followed by articles that pointed to concrete improvements the District could make to reverse the declines. All of this represented hours of work completed by volunteers as a service to the District and the public yet it was ignored.

This week Dr. Varley sent families an email with a visual representation of this very same data with messaging that the District did well in comparison to some of the schools in our comparison. While still demonstrating the District as last, this visual representation made it appear as if “we were right there.” It is important for the Berkeley Heights community –especially parents — to have a real picture of what the numbers say.

Here is a table representing our overall performance as a District and our cost per pupil based on the NJ DOE Report and Taxpayers Guide to Education Spending (2022).

We are not the only entity arriving at this conclusion – here is a table representing Berkeley Height rankings across various media outlets.

With that said, and mainly as a result of the hard work of our teaching staff and advocacy on the part of the community, we appear to demonstrate very modest improvements despite the leadership of our District. Yet, we will be clear on how we compare to surrounding Districts once the DOE releases it’s performance reports later this year (based on preliminary data on state testing results for 2022).  

With our proficiencies remaining a huge question mark, a transportation concern that potentially represents hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue, another budget process ahead of us, and a superintendent search that the public hopes will be transparent, what was the purpose of this communication involving District resources and why now?