Beginning next year, officials at the WW-P school district will be putting the district’s curriculum online for parents as well as implementing a new assessment system to track student progress.
The changes, which were revealed during the board’s meeting on April 12, will help any parent who is interested in looking at what his or her student is being taught, said School Board President Hemant Marathe.
“We’re coming up with common assessments in each subject for each course level online, which will allow us to see how we are doing, how the students are doing, and how they will do better in the future,” Marathe said. “That will allow us to help students better by seeing what they are learning and what they are not learning and provide us with an objective measure of what we are doing in the schools.”
Board review of the new assessment system, which will begin next school year, began on April 13.
During public comment at the meeting, school board candidate Rachelle Feldman Hurwitz suggested it would be the perfect time to implement an academic standard for student athletes in the school district.
Hurwitz said she attended an event sponsored by the WW-P African American Parent Support Group, where she heard that statewide, there is a 1.0 grade average minimum for student athletes (see letter, page 5). She suggested the board look at increasing the minimum to 2.0.
“Imagine giving our athletes more to compete for than records and scores,” she told the board. “Imagine the improvement of quality of life for our entire community.”
Rutgers University, she says, has a mandatory 2.2 GPA requirement for its student athletes. “There’s no reason why we can’t do the same in our high schools and middle schools,” she said. “In the long run, we are creating a better community.”
Hurwitz says the trend is statewide and not specific to WW-P, and she just wants to see WW-P be a leader. “This is more about what can we do to create a new trend,” she said. “How can we set the standard and therefore improve the quality of life of our children, whether they’re an athlete or not? How do we provide our children a level playing field?”
In response to her comments during the board meeting, Russell Lazovick, the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, said that “the district follows NJSIAA guidelines, as specified for all districts.”
“We do not mandate a minimum GPA,” he said. “It’s a credit requirement. Every year, students are required to fulfill certain amount of credits in order to participate in sports.”
Alapakkam Manikandan, Hurwitz’s opponent in this year’s election, said he and other school board members talked to the administration after the meeting and did some research. “As far as the policies and guidelines go, we follow what is specified to us by the NJSIAA,” he said. “According to their regulations, in order to participate in an athletic program, somebody can have a GPA of 1.0. As a state school district, we are forced to adhere to that.”
However, he said board members found details on WW-P’s own situation. “In reality, in our district, the average GPA that athletes have is around 3.27,” he said. “In fact, in some of the cases, and actually if you look at those who are below a 2.0 GPA, less of our athletes fit that category as opposed to the non-athlete population.”
Only 3 percent of the student athletes in WW-P are below a 2.0 GPA, he said. “That really goes to show, in our district, athletes are performing equally as good or in some cases, better than our non-athletes.”
He said the board is working on an initiative to analyze the achievement gap that exists between various categories of students (in districts around the state) that will help the board zero in on the achievement gap and try to work with all students.
After the meeting, Hurwitz said she doesn’t deny that WW-P is an exemplary district. She does not feel “it is out of the realm of inquiry” to simply try to better the district and be a leader in this area. “I’m really just asking them to examine the requirements.”
