Sparta school board sets next year's calendar

BY AMY SHEWCHUK
SPARTA - The Sparta Board of Education held its reorganization meeting this past Monday, receiving presentations from students and teachers and addressing concerns about the proposed 2018-19 school calendar, including snow days, emergency closings and Spring Break.
The meeting began with highlights from Alpine School and Sparta Middle School. First grade teachers Marissa Rajewski and Amanda Lyons spoke about NGSS, the state's "next generation science standards" which program is in its first year of implementation at Alpine.
“We have both attended workshops for the last 2 years that have helped us transition our lessons and our thinking," Rajewski said. "The goal of NGSS is to create standards that are rich in content and practice, arranged in a coherent manner across disciplines and grades to provide all students an internationally benchmarked science education. For us, we see NGSS as a shift in thinking. Before these standards we had very specific science content that we had to present and students had to absorb. Now we are guiding our students to ask questions, notice the world around them and become critical thinkers. The lessons are much more student-centered and allow them time to explore and the hardest part, trial and error."
Rajewski and Lyons showed a brief power point presentation highlighting the school’s second annual Light and Sound ‘Museum,’ which took place on April 17 and 18.
“Students were led to different classrooms, each room had their own phenomena and theme," Lyons said. They all had a ball.”
Six 8th grade students from Sparta Middle School presented their ideas for their ‘20 Time Project,’ a work students have been engaged in all year.
“It is a project based on Google’s innovative policy of giving its workers 20% of their work week, giving them resources and freedom to pursue any project that they have passion for,” said SMS English Language Arts teacher Laura Sofen.
Students Andrew Daghlian, Mason Maher and Nate Miller showed a clippable cup holder that could be attached to surfaces such as desks and tables.
“We came up with the idea because I kept knocking my aluminum water bottle off my desk in the middle of class, and it makes a really loud noise and everyone gets annoyed by it” Daghlian said. “We had a few other ideas but they fell through with trial and error, so we decided on the cup holders.”
All profits for the cup holders are going to the Wounded Warrior Project.
“We thought it would be nice to help our veterans,” Daghlian said.
8th graders Hayley Ouimette, Liv Romano and Jenna Eltorky spoke about their project, which was putting together a petition to change the dress code at SMS.
“One day Mr. Gregory came up to our lunch table and asked us to stand up. We were all wearing shorts that did not meet the requirements on how long they are supposed to be,” Ouimette said. “We told him that the rule was unfair and that there weren’t any stylish shorts sold that weren’t too short or too long. Mr. Gregory agreed that the rules were outdated and asked if we had any ideas for the new rules.”
“The day Mr. Gregory came up to us and asked us about our ideas was how we came up with our idea to update the dress code for our 20 Time Project,” Romano said. “We wanted to change the rules that girls can’t wear shorts shorter than wrist length rather than fingertip length."
The girls also wanted to change the ‘no shoulder’ rule.
“We aren’t allowed to wear off the shoulder tops because apparently they are distracting,” Eltorky said. “But in reality, no one gets distracted by shoulders. We simply wanted to change the dress code to keep up with the current styles.”
The girls created a petition and had a goal of 200 signatures. While they were glad so many students seemed to feel the same way, they still could not meet their goal so they created the petition on change.org and acquired a lot more signatures. They also promoted the petition through their social media.
"We learned that sometimes you have to fail to be successful and that you can do anything you put your mind to," one of the girls said, speaking for all three. "Now we’re here presenting in front of the BOE, asking that you consider changing the dress code.”
The board then discussed the school calendar, and whether to add emergency closing days to the end of the school year or subtract them from spring break.
Superintendent Rossi said that the calendar before the board was the result of much discussions and committee work.
“There’s been a certain degree of angst, concern and upheaval about the proposed calendar,” Rossi said.
Rossi was referring to a recent flap caused by his response to a parent's email that was critical of Rossi's proposed amended school calendar because it would not give teachers of AP classes sufficient time to prepare students for their tests the regarding amending the Spring Break would affect AP students.
“My intention was never to upset or antagonize anyone,” Rossi said.
The amended calendar for 2018-19 would be as follows: Teachers come back the Tuesday after Labor Day and the first day for students would be that Thursday. Columbus Day, Yom Kippur and Martin Luther King Day would still be days off. Spring Break would start on Good Friday as it always has and run through the following week. President’s Day would be a three day weekend, which Rossi noted is good not only for a break but is an important time to have the schools cleaned thoroughly in the midst of flu season.
After several amendments and more discussion, the Board voted that next year, if the district exceeds five snow days by March 1, additional days would be taken from Spring Break. If there are closings after March 1, the days would be added to the end of the school year.
As far as school closings resulting from loss of power, Rossi said that the NJ Department of Education would not grant waivers.
“The only option for that is to use Saturdays,” said Rossi.
The first two Saturdays of June have conflicts including Sparta Day so they would have to be the last two Saturdays. The session would be a typical four hour early dismissal day. There is concern on how these Saturdays will be attended. Rossi was asked by members of the public about other options, such as split sessions or school on Sundays instead of Saturdays.
“Based on past experience split sessions don’t work, " Rossi said.
Board Member Linda Curcio and Assistant Superitnendent Dr. Daniel Johnson were each at their last board meeting. Curcio is moving out of town and said that the Sparta BOE was “the best seated Board I’ve worked with so far.”
“It’s been such a pleasure working on this Board," Johnson said. "I’ve learned a lot about finance, budgets, governance, board relations and how to work through difficult times.”
Curcio will be replaced by Karen Scott, who had resigned her seat earlier this year before the term ended. Scott will be sworn in on June 21.