Meeting school reporting requirements proving burdensome

By Eileen Oldfield Staff Writer
   MANVILLE — The requirement for providing information used to compile reports on how the district is doing is becoming a real chore, according to school officials — and that’s why the Board of Education voted to combine the position with a Technology Assistant position at Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting.
   The district’s co-coordinators resigned from the positions earlier this year, citing time spent compiling information from the database — called the New Jersey Standards Measurement and Resource for Teaching (NJ SMART) — was hindering their regular district positions. Now, the district is considering a plan to join the position with a part-time technological assistant’s position.
   The NJ SMART database compiles school district information for each school year, including test scores, attendance information, and graduation rates each year. The database tracks approximately 40 information fields, with the reports being filed in October, and the information updated — or corrected — in December and June.
   Dr. Burkhardt emphasized the district’s need to integrate more technology into its everyday workings, and the Technology Assistant would split between working on the technology portion of the job and preparing the NJ SMART documents, with the duties depending on district needs and state deadlines.
   The technology portion of the job would include assisting the district’s Technology Coordinator, and could include installing software on district computers, minor computer hardware repairs, and updating the district Web site.
   Initially completed by two district staff members, filing the data from the district’s four schools — and correcting any mistakes on the NJ SMART forms — proved to be more time-consuming than the staff members initially realized.
   ”They’re resigning because the amount of work is becoming incredible,” Dr. Burkhardt said at the Sept. 9 Board of Education meeting, just a week before the board accepted the staff members’ resignations. “It’s becoming, literally, hours and hours of work a week. These two people said, ‘we can’t do our jobs’ (and prepare the NJ SMART documents).”
   During the September meeting, board member Ned Panfile asked whether the coordinators would continue the task if offered a larger stipend; however, Dr. Burkhardt said the coordinators declined larger stipends offered, though they continued their work through the NJ SMART’s Oct. 15 deadline.
   The district paid each coordinator a $550 stipend for taking the task last year.
   The full-time technology assistant position does not have a salary established, Dr. Burkhardt said, and the district would need to place a classified advertisement before filling the position.