Community Correspondence to the Berkeley Heights Board of Education – May and June 2023

Why is the District taking the time and expense of redacting Dr. Varley’s name and links to public information about our schools? It’s like the District is expending dollars to bring on yet another lawsuit – as if that’s what they want.

By simply stopping these redactions and placing items like Committee Meeting Minutes and Attachments, Executive Committee Minutes and Attachments, the Budget and Bill Lists on the brand new website the OPRA Burden would reduce signficantly…so would posting reports instead of denying their existence.

OR

The District and BOE can stop having important matters discussed in Committees altogether and discuss them as a Board as a whole – just like our Town Council.

Of course, as you will read in the email exchange below at the end of this, this feedback is (again) ignored as it’s not about the OPRA burden – that’s simply a red herring being used to distract away from why the OPRA burden exists in the first place.

In any case, here is a summary of the correspondence we received for the May and June 2023 BOE Meetings.

• Email from a Staff Member that the Matter Connected to their RICE Notice be discussed publicly during Open Meeting.  
• Email from parent questioning the District’s violation of the AP Exam Policy
• Email from parent requesting that the June 5th BOE Meeting be rescheduled to accommodate teachers and their families (awards ceremony).
• Email from parent expressing their concerns about the District changing language based on biological sex to gender identities.
• Email from a parent expressing concerns about the Records Custodian’s inability to serve in his role due to disclosure of children’s names, five-week extensions, and using the excuse of being too busy with his other jobs in the District.
• Emails clarifying CMS Librarian duties and advocating against splitting Librarian duties between CMS and GL. We received an update on this item from a solid source. From what we’ve been told, the media specialist that the District was going to split between schools will be at CMS full-time (again) until they find another media librarian for the high school. It also appears they are hiring a secretary for the supervisors’ office. A position they just cut.
• A ton of email from John (they were all turned into articles) to the BOE on our declines in proficiency.  Dr. Varley’s name is blocked out when I reference her assertion that the reason we’ve declined more than other schools was COVID (as if no other school dealt with COVID), and when I asked that she present on the declines. Website addresses to the information connected to the declines in proficiency is also redacted.  
• The community-wide evaluation of the Superintendent.  They redacted Dr. Varley’s name from that as well.

If you would like copies of the correspondence, please email [email protected]. We will not provide the community-wide evaluation – I mean, we don’t necessarily disagree with what’s on there, but it’s just brutal.

I would provide the graphs on responses, though, if you want them.

Email Exchange with the OPRA Custodian

All Articles On Board Correspondence (2023)

All the Articles on the Districts OPRA Issues

This Article Made Possible by OPRA…Learn How To Protect This Important Law!