The Middletown Board of Education held their last meeting of the year on Monday, December 16th, at MHSN’s library in a matter of 65 minutes. All board members were present except for the board’s vice-president Joan Minnuies.
In the course of the meeting, the board passed a motion which would allocate up to $40,000 to fund a new freshman lacrosse team, board president Chris Aveta said that the funding of the team should cost only about $38,000. During the discussion, board member Leonora Caminiti raised concerns saying, “I’m all for what we’re doing with lacrosse… but South is telling us that they’re over crowded, not in special education, but in regular.”
Superintendent Dr. William George responded to Caminiti saying that the district saw a drop in class sizes and said that the district will look into hiring more teachers for the next school year. “More teachers next year is not going to help students this year,” Caminiti said.
The board said that they were unable to hire additional teachers because they decided to put in place a 1 percent tax increase for the budget instead of the maximum 2 percent increase. George also said that they would have to keep class sizes the same for the rest of the year saying, “to make changes midyear can be disruptive to the educational process.” George also said, “the amount of time this board has been sitting, we’re added a significant amount of staff members.”
The board also raised concerns about the sport of hockey saying that only 70 percent of the program is paid by the board. “If we’re gonna have the sports, we have to pay for them,” Aveta said.
Funding was not the only aspect of sports discussed at the meeting; the issue of getting concussion headbands was also brought up. “After looking at research and talking with doctors,” board member and chairman of the Co-Curricular Committee John Bennett said, “there is not a substantial amount of information that [the headbands] work, so we are going to hold off on that.”
The board also plans on expanding the bandwidth in schools as they move forward to the PARCC assessment and computerized exams. Board member Susan Griffin said that the board is also looking into comparing e-books with textbooks to make a decision for the following years.
George praised a resolution put forward by the said that would make the amount of funding that a district receives based off of student enrollment and not daily attendance. “The stable funding should be based on enrollment, not attendance,” George said.
The board also announced a program presented by the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office on the increase in usage of heroine on January 14th at 7 pm in MHSN’s auditorium.
It was the last board meeting for members Chris Aveta and John Bennett who was elected off the board in November’s election. “It’s been an honor to serve the students and people of Middletown,” Aveta said. Board member Vincent Brand was the only board member up for re-election able to re-secure his seat on the board as Michael Donlon and Bob Banta will be sworn onto the board during its reorganization meeting on January 7th.
