Here’s a summary of what was said Tuesday night:
MIDDLETOWN, NJ — Here’s a summary of what was said at the Tuesday night Middletown school board meeting, which you can watch here, or below.
This was the first public Board meeting attended by school board member Joe Fitzgerald, who was arrested June 30 and is currently fighting the illegal gun charges filed against him. Fitzgerald did not say much at Tuesday night’s meeting, except to echo a suggestion from Mark Soporowski that the district make a list of all properties owned or leased by the school district, including vacant buildings and athletic fields, and make that list publicly available online.
As the meeting began, it was newly announced that Alliance Orthopedics would like to put advertising signs on the new football scoreboards at High School North and South. Alliance Orthopedics will pay the district $10,000 per year for five school years to have their ads up there.
Repairs are needed on the High School North track, specifically on the pole vault area. Those repairs will be done in the next few weeks.
The district is also “monitoring” the High School South turf field. The district knows the turf is starting to age, and will need to be replaced in the next few years. In the meantime, the turf will get increased maintenance to maintain it over the next few years, the school district said.
And bleacher repairs are ongoing at the high school football stadiums.
Superintendent Jessica Alfone then gave her report:
The first month of school went off successfully, she said.
Middletown school district saw an increase in two things at the start of the school year: More students have enrolled in the free breakfast/lunch program, and there’s been an increase in enrollment in Middletown’s before-and after-care programs. As a result, Champions, the district’s after-care provider, had to hire additional staff to keep up with the new students.
Middletown is still awaiting the results of a boundary analysis and building utilization study, Alfone said.
This is the study the school district hired Ross Haber & Associates consulting firm to do in June, paying Ross Haber $24,000 evaluate how all the buildings in the district are being used, and what is the best use for each school building. That report was supposed to be ready in mid- to late September. Alfone did not say the reason for its delay.
Their study will be presented first to school district administration, then the Board of Education and then finally to the general public. No date has been set yet for when that will occur.
Alfone previously said in May the consulting firm will look at “how our boundaries could be redesigned” and any Middletown school buildings “that are aging and could be taken offline.”
“All of our facilities are being evaluated. Everything’s fair game,” she said in May.
The findings from this study will be used to do a possible redistricting in Middletown schools, including possibly closing one or more schools. The Middletown school district announced this spring it has a $10-million budget hole, and cannot keep operating as usual. Also, some schools in the Middletown school district are very old, the superintendent previously said.
Moving back to the meeting, for reasons that are unknown Board member Joan Minnuies said Tuesday night she did not approve paying the legal bills for Middletown school board lawyer Bruce Padula.
Patch asked Minnuies why did does not want to pay his legal fees; she did not answer.
(In February of this year, Board members Leonora Caminiti, Mark Soporowski and Deb Wright accused Board president Frank Capone of trying to rush through the re-hiring of Padula. Padula was ultimately hired by the board to be one of the district’s lawyers.)
At the tail end of the meeting, Soporowski asked the board to do an evaluation of superintendent Alfone. He said this evaluation is required by state law and said it was “a serious lapse” by the board not to have done it. One member of the public later stood up and said Alfone was being “railroaded and thrown up the bus” in a political attack.
Soporowski also said he wants the school district to put together a list of all properties owned or leased by the school district, including vacant buildings, land and athletic fields. He wants the district to put that on the district website. His suggestion was met with claps from the crowd.
The school district responded that it has made such a list in the past, but it is not posted on the district website. Capone directed school staff to post the list on the district website.
Soporowski also suggested that Board meetings be moved permanently to the High School North auditorium, to accommodate more members of the public. And he also asked that the district improve the audio and visual quality of the meetings being streamed, as it is sometimes difficult to hear the meetings on YouTube.
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