Berkeley Heights School District Saddled with Current Attorney for Another Year
While it was clear at the end of 2022 that the Berkeley Heights Board of Education was not going to address calls to look into hiring a different law firm, it was still disappointing to see the firm of Cleary, Giacobbe, Alfieri, Jacobs, LLC renewed for another year with no hesitation or opposition. This law firm has given our district...
Parents Aren’t creating THE “Decorum Issues” at BOE Meetings…
In this six-minute clip, parents and residents can notice: (1) Ms. Penna consistently interrupting and talking over parents while taking up their 3-minute space while advocating for decorum. While she refuses to answer questions because “BOE Meetings are not a back and forth” she has no problem interrupting parents and taking up their time to speak. (2) The Attorney attempting...
Berkeley Heights Administrators Remain a Wall of Silence
Parent’s continue to face an Administration that is short on answers concerning the Districts Difficulties with Math In this clip from the 01/05/2023 meeting, a parent faces yet another wall of silence after expressing a coherent fact-based commentary connected to the District’s continued difficulties with teaching math. Dr. Varley, responsible for this disaster, did not offer a single explanation, rebuttal,...
“Teaching is an Art”
We’ve heard this from our Superintendent recently in conjunction with parent concerns over Building Thinking Classroom methods and the impact it is having on students. Our administration, across the district, has declined to intervene on behalf of students who are failing, whose families have to turn to tutors or outside math classes, or who have come to realize their best...
Thinking Classroom: Where Are We Now, What Happens Next
Building the Thinking Classroom (BTC), on paper and in theory, sounds like a wonderful way to teach. Who doesn’t want their child to be a critical thinker, able to come up with independent, creative solutions to problems? In reality, as parents either know now, or are coming to realize, there is nearly as wide a range of success with this...
The First BOE Meeting Offered Parents Little Hope For Change
Angela Penna and her bloc will continue the practice of the former BOE President in allowing the Attorney to act as an unelected BOE member. There were several instances during the meeting where she and the Attorney rudely interrupted Berkeley Heights parents. The purpose of this is to likely occupy time so that the parent has less opportunity to speak...
Competent Town Admin fired because the Kingsley Tribe is mad about losing another mayoral election
UPDATE: a petition has been created by residents encouraging the Town Council to reverse their decision and hire Liza back. As the number of parents who are questioning the competence of the Superintendent and District’s Business Manager grows exponentially (to the point now where the Board Attorney and BOE President appear to be infringing on resident’s rights to speak through...
Renewed Parent Frustration and More Poor Decision-Making from District Administrators
Implementing new teaching methods can be a wonderful way to spark a student’s interest or create a better and more thorough understanding of material. It can just as easily lead to confusion, frustration and lessened motivation for learning, which is what we have seen over the past two to three years in our district with the move first to the...
Berkeley Heights Public School BTC Parent Survey Results-Preliminary
This is a preliminary reporting of results on BHCW’s parent survey of BTC. WE are still collecting responses. If you have not yet completed the survey and have a child in a BTC Class, you may do so here. Update 11/23/2022 on data as of 8:51am 100 responses for 126 Children 78 Parents (78%) Agreed or Completely Agreed with the...
Varley, Kot and The Ongoing Obsession with Sai Akiri
Instead of trying to repair yet another mess she has created in our Math program, Dr. Varley appear to be using her time and her staff to continue her strange campaign against Sai Akiri The District has been using OPRA denials, requests and extensions to seemingly exert some power and even intimidation over parents. It now seems as if the...
nj21st.com (with the exception of featured images and logo) is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
