The big education news in NJ this week was the DOE’s release of the final list of low-performing “priority schools” that, due to the Feds’ approval of our No Child Left Behind waiver, relaxes oversight of higher-performing schools and intensifies oversight of the worst of the lot. Here’s coverage from NJ Spotlight and Star-Ledger, and here’s the list of our 75 “Priority Schools” (the lowest-performing 5%) and 183 “Focus Schools.”

Trenton Times lede today: “April school board elections could be heading the way of the dinosaurs.” On Tuesday only 73 school districts will hold budget and member elections — the other 468 moved to November, grabbing a chance to bypass the budget vote altogether, as long as the budget is below the mandated 2% cap. Assemblyman Lou Greenwald gloats.

The Star-Ledger reports on the perennially strange Newark School Board race, with two slates of candidates, backed respectively by Shavar Jeffries and Ras Baraka.

The Record describes the glee in Passaic after “a $100 million windfall in state aid,” which has “transformed Passaic’s school board race into a campaign of big promises, with lots of money suddenly available to tackle the big problems that have plagued the district for decades.”

The Star Ledger looks at the cost of educating special education students in Trenton Public Schools, which is projected to go up by $4.2 million this year.

Joseph Del Grosso, President of the Newark Teachers Union, is outraged by Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson’s attempts to change teacher evaluations so that all students have access to effective educators. He says, “There is no language in our contract that denies the Newark Public Schools human resources department from hiring or firing anyone (with due process)” – there’s that pesky tenure thing – and that the evaluators of teachers should be peers because “in all other careers, professionals are evaluated by their peers; this must happen in education, as well.”

The saga of Princeton International Academy Charter School may have reached its final chapter: the South Brunswick Zoning Board turned them down yet again, and Ed. Comm. Cerf ruled that the school districts of Princeton, South Brunswick, and West Windsor-Plainsboro were within their rights to use tax-payer funds to fight PIACS’ approval.
Yet, according to NJ Spotlight,

Cerf did issue a veiled warning that the districts’ use of taxpayer funds was not limitless. The districts have been “zealous and relentless in challenging the existence of PIACS,” he wrote, and said their authority to challenge the school is “not unfettered.”
“Such behavior is inconsistent with the professional duty of educators whose primary concern must continually be the students of the community as a whole.

Good piece from the Press of Atlantic City: “New Jersey invests more money per student in public preschool than any other state according to the 2011 Preschool Yearbook released Tuesday by the National Institute for Early Education Research based at Rutgers University.”

Department of School Board Officials Behaving Badly (courtesy of the Gloucester County Times):

If you haven’t heard it yet, check the YouTube.com posting of a recorded conversation between Interim Superintendent/Principal Vincent Tarantino and two school board members identified by those familiar with their voices as Jim Worrell and Alan Boultinghouse.

Following the Feb. 23 board meeting, somebody left the tape running on a machine used to record the minutes. Tarantino, who has since apologized for the incident, is heard on the tape using vulgar language to describe parents, other board members and the Democratic Party. In response, the two board members propose various acts of retribution against the parents as well as an inclination toward dereliction of duty, should Tuesday’s election deny them the political majority. With that majority, comes the right to award pricey contracts to politically connected professionals.