Dismantle the Asbury Park School District
The lead editorial in the Sunday Press, "Dismantle the district," urged that the Asbury Park School District be dissolved and folded into a regional district that includes Ocean Township, Manasquan and Monmouth Regional. It's not the first time we have proposed regionalization, but it went into further detail. The editorial has generated considerable discussion, particularly in Asbury Park - a discussion we hope will continue, here and in our forums section.
The editorial appears below:
There seems to be no end to the depressing stories coming out of the Asbury Park School District. In the past two weeks alone, there have been allegations of padded enrollment figures and bid rigging, a vote of no confidence in the high school administration by the teachers and a document raid on the Board of Education offices by investigators sent by the U.S. Attorney.
Add to that the stubbornly low test scores despite the highest per-pupil costs of any K-12 district in New Jersey and a student-to-staff ratio of more than 5 to 1 at the high school. The violence in and around the schools. The on-again, off-again sniping on the school board. The disastrous lack of leadership at the middle school and the chaos in the halls and classrooms there and in the high school. The superintendent the board tried to fire, was forced by the state to hire back, then tried to oust again, suspending him instead with pay at the insistence of the Department of Education.
There have been some glimmers of hope over the past several years, but they have proved fleeting. For the most part, the school system has been a disaster. It is broken. Stronger leadership might help. But finding it — and keeping it — has been a persistent challenge. A state takeover isn't the answer either, as experience in other districts has shown. Given the hurdles the district faces, dismantling it and starting over offers the best chance of providing the city's students with a quality education.
It's time for a new approach to educating children in Asbury Park — one that involves creating a desegregated regional district that includes Asbury Park, Monmouth Regional, Ocean Township and Manasquan. Asbury Park High School should be turned into a county magnet school for the arts. The middle school should be converted into a trade school under the jurisdiction of the Monmouth County Vocational School District. At least two of the elementary schools should be left open, but operated by the regional district and desegregated. And Asbury Park students should be sent in proportionate numbers to other schools in the newly created regional district — along with increased per-pupil aid.
At the same time, steps should be taken to separate those students who are not interested in learning, or who prove disruptive to the learning environment, from those seeking a good education. That will likely require expansion of the county's alternative high school, or the creation of a branch of the high school at a central location in the newly formed regional district. The state must ensure the regional district creates an environment in every school that is conducive to learning.
State officials can't allow the Asbury Park schools to continue to fail the children they are responsible for educating. They can't continue to waste taxpayers' money by pumping millions of dollars in state aid into dysfunctional schools. A new, regional model is needed. They can't keep doing what they've been doing.
The editorial appears below:
There seems to be no end to the depressing stories coming out of the Asbury Park School District. In the past two weeks alone, there have been allegations of padded enrollment figures and bid rigging, a vote of no confidence in the high school administration by the teachers and a document raid on the Board of Education offices by investigators sent by the U.S. Attorney.
Add to that the stubbornly low test scores despite the highest per-pupil costs of any K-12 district in New Jersey and a student-to-staff ratio of more than 5 to 1 at the high school. The violence in and around the schools. The on-again, off-again sniping on the school board. The disastrous lack of leadership at the middle school and the chaos in the halls and classrooms there and in the high school. The superintendent the board tried to fire, was forced by the state to hire back, then tried to oust again, suspending him instead with pay at the insistence of the Department of Education.
There have been some glimmers of hope over the past several years, but they have proved fleeting. For the most part, the school system has been a disaster. It is broken. Stronger leadership might help. But finding it — and keeping it — has been a persistent challenge. A state takeover isn't the answer either, as experience in other districts has shown. Given the hurdles the district faces, dismantling it and starting over offers the best chance of providing the city's students with a quality education.
It's time for a new approach to educating children in Asbury Park — one that involves creating a desegregated regional district that includes Asbury Park, Monmouth Regional, Ocean Township and Manasquan. Asbury Park High School should be turned into a county magnet school for the arts. The middle school should be converted into a trade school under the jurisdiction of the Monmouth County Vocational School District. At least two of the elementary schools should be left open, but operated by the regional district and desegregated. And Asbury Park students should be sent in proportionate numbers to other schools in the newly created regional district — along with increased per-pupil aid.
At the same time, steps should be taken to separate those students who are not interested in learning, or who prove disruptive to the learning environment, from those seeking a good education. That will likely require expansion of the county's alternative high school, or the creation of a branch of the high school at a central location in the newly formed regional district. The state must ensure the regional district creates an environment in every school that is conducive to learning.
State officials can't allow the Asbury Park schools to continue to fail the children they are responsible for educating. They can't continue to waste taxpayers' money by pumping millions of dollars in state aid into dysfunctional schools. A new, regional model is needed. They can't keep doing what they've been doing.
posted by Randy Bergmann at 5:58 PM
4 Comments:
Where dose it make any sense to create a regional district to remedy AP's missmanagement of their schools?Dose it seem fair to bring the same problems that hard working citizens tried to solve, by moving their children to schools that might give them a chance for a better education? You are dead wrong to think that the surrouding communities should be forced to bail out AP's school system when the Department of Education failed to stop this when they had the chance,making the board rehire the corupt theif they had as a superintendent.
Thank you so much for this Editorial Mr. Bergmann.
Asbury Park High School was segregated by a ruling (I believe it was 1996) by the Commissioner of Education that allowed the white kids in the district to be bused to Red Bank Regional.
That left the black children segregated, and they happen to be the of the lowest economic group in the State.
I hope I don't have to argue with anyone that state sponsored segregation is bad, particularly since it was outlawed in Brown v Bd. of Education.
There will be no political will to bring the white students back to Asbury Park High School.
The better option is as you suggest, to split up the Asbury Park High School Students (there are about 480 of them) to the surrounding 7 High Schools.
That is only 20 students per grade, so the impact will be minmal
I hope your paper will keep on this issue, as there won't be any political will to help these children without that pressure.
As long as we keep the kids in the forefront of anything we do in Asbury Park, there is a real chance of success vis a vis the regionalization of the Asbury Park schools.
This is no time for "blaming" anyone...that time has been the flavor of the week for years. And like any flavor we have been fickle. Once it is the superintendent; then it's the parents; then the teachers; then the school board...and on and on.
Now is the time for action that is swift and concrete. Our kids have suffered too long and too many of their lives have been diminished because despite their status as graduates or drop-outs of our school system, they are living lives of financial, social and educational despair.
I agree with Justified Right and the Sunday editorial. I say regionalize almost immediately and
give these kids a chance to salvage something of their early educational careers.
Then we must begin to focus on our pre-schoolers who right now are the only ones who have a real chance of getting a viable education in Asbury Park. They and their parents are the "real" future of Asbury Park. Sadly I must say that too many of our present day kids are already a part of Asbury Park's past which as most of us would agree has been dismal and has failed our kids. Let's not continue the tragedy of kids'lives becoming negligible in our schools.
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