More than a year after deciding to formally review the district’s K-12 mathematics program, the WW-P School Board has hired an outside consultant to do the work. But that didn’t come without board contemplation about whether the company was qualified and whether it actually needed to look outside the district in the first place. ##M:[more]##
The discussion came when the board’s curriculum committee made the recommendation to hire Math Foundations LLC for $26,”180 at the October 9 board meeting to do the consulting work.
But board member Stan Katz said he felt the company was a second-best solution and that the district was “settling” on the company because it was told it had to look outside, when possibly the best scenario might have been to do it internally. He said he also felt that since the group historically specializes in urban and under-performing areas,”their expertise is in a whole different set of areas than where our likely problems and likely solutions would come from.”
“I’m not sure these people truly understand what’s going on in West Windsor,” he said.
His concerns were prefaced by a recap of how the recommendation came about. The district chose last August to look for an outside consulting company because it wanted the review to be unbiased. Having an in-house review team could leave the district in a position where members of the school community might not feel they could speak freely and accurately about the program or that the review team would get defensive when criticisms were given, said Steven Mayer, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.
In addition, if there were any difficult recommendations made as the district moved forward, having outside research would be useful in building the process to implement change, he added.
High School South Principal Chuck Rudnick, who was on the review committee, said the committee had a hard time getting proposals for the consulting work and eventually only ended up with four responses — only two of which the committee thought were worth reviewing.
After interviewing both the candidates, the committee was impressed with presentations by Angela McIver and Valerie Klein of Math Foundations LLC, he said.
Board member Randall Tucker said he didn’t feel he was in the position to second-guess the committee and saw why the board needed to hire an outside consultant, but he was somewhat worried by the comments that the district was settling for the company.
Superintendent Victoria Kniewel, Mayer, and Rudnick reassured the board they didn’t believe that was the case and that they felt the district could gain from hiring the consultants.
“It was really framed as ‘Don’t necessarily go and come back with one of those two (bidders), but make sure that one of these consultants had the value that we were looking for,’ and the committee felt that this consultant could” do the job, Mayer said, referring to the committee’s review process.
In other business, Roseann Zingaro, who has been a teacher with the district for 13 years, was hired as High School South’s vice principal. She comes from Community Middle School, where she was an English-as-a-second-language teacher.
And the board also decided that it will start beefing up its meeting minutes, after Katz suggested that they were not as comprehensive and detailed as they could be.
In addition to including public comments, explanations for board members’ votes, and formal amendments to the minutes if a board member makes changes to them, Katz also suggested that the minutes include copies of presentations made by members of the public.
Rather than just simply indicating in the minutes that there was a presentation made, “what we said there could be very important, and I think it should be a part of the minutes,” he said.
