November 20th Newark B.O.E. Business Meeting

Tonight I went to the Newark Board of Education Business Meeting. There were 15 board members seated around a table, with a few others as well as spectators seated around the edge of the room. The meeting was pretty boring, I guess because I really did not understand much of what they were talking about. There was a lot of discussion of No Child Left Behind scores and Newark (as opposed to the rest of essex county) being asked to work on its own plan. A code of ethics was discussed, as well as something about one board member being late with it and having a late fine. 2 members dictated the discussion for quite some time until about half an hour into it come members started contributing with questions and comments. One member talked about improvement; and about someone allegedy showing up at a school unannounced but there was no record of that happening. The members started talking about returning districts to local control (I guess going from state to local?). Another member had concerns about written documentation from the meeting of all the rules they were making; he felt like the other members were making things up as they were going along. He said he was sick of hearing "I don't know" and wanted to make sure the "quality of life" in Newark schools was imploding. After some more discussion the public session of the meeting ended. It lasted about an hour.