A failure to communicate effectively with its customers – parents and children – left the Manalapan-Eng-lishtown Regional School District with a black eye last week. What is generally the rather typical opening of a new school year was anything but typical.
Instead, parents, Board of Education members and district administrators found themselves at odds during a series of contentious meetings.
One of the reasons for the lack of effective communication may be attributable to the fact that unlike many other school districts in New Jersey, the Manalapan-Englishtown school district does not employ a public information officer – a person who has been trained in dealing with crisis situations and is knowledgeable about communicating difficult issues to the public.
Instead of being subject to ridicule on a New Jersey radio station, the board could have employed the services of a person who, through experience, would have known how to use the media to get important information to parents and children in a manner that reflected positively on the district.
As it turned out, the district was instead the butt of jokes on a popular Garden State radio station.
A person with experience in the public information field would have been able to advise officials how to answer residents’ questions, instead, administrators hid behind the old saw “We can’t tell you anything because we may be involved in litigation someday.”
At issue last week was how the planned opening of the Manal-apan-Englishtown Middle School (MEMS) following the completion of a major construction project had gone so terribly awry.
In the week before the first day of school (Sept. 11), parents of the 1,400 seventh- and eighth-grade MEMS pupils received information from the district that indicated that students would report to MEMS as scheduled on Sept. 11.
Then something went wrong.
School administrators say they learned late on Sept. 6 that many items involved in the MEMS construction project had failed inspection and that the school would not receive a certificate of occupancy or even a temporary certificate of occupancy that would permit the building to open on Sept. 11.
Parents were notified on Sept. 8 that their children would begin school on Sept. 12 and would be assigned to temporarily attend and receive instruction at one of the district’s six elementary schools.
Many parents are not happy with that contingency plan. They do not believe it is providing their children with appropriate educational opportunities.
As the week of Sept. 18 began, students who will attend MEMS this year still found themselves continuing to receive instruction in the elementary schools. It is the stated hope of district administrators to have the students back in the old part of MEMS by Sept. 25.
If the pupils can be returned to MEMS by next week, the negative impact on their academic careers and lives should not be too severe. It is everyone’s hope that will be the case.
Meanwhile, the school board and administration are left with trying to figure out what went wrong in the construction process that led to a multitude of problems being uncovered when it was time for the work to be inspected. There is no blame to assign right now because it is just not known who is responsible.
The superintendent of schools has already announced that she plans to retire in June 2007. That means school board members should be starting the search for a new superintendent. Have they started a search? We don’t know because there has not been any communication from them. Will the public be involved in the search for a new superintendent? We don’t know because the board has no one who takes the time to inform the public of important school issues.
We believe it is time – many years after other districts have established the position – for the elected board members and the professional educators who run the Manalapan-Englishtown school district to give serious consideration to hiring a professional communicator who will be able to work with administrators and board members on any number of issues that involve the public.
Such a person would have proved his or her value last week when the district found itself in the eye of a hurricane, and communication was lacking.