BY LAYLI WHYTE
Staff Writer

FAIR HAVEN — The Board of Education was schooled this week on how to set and prioritize goals for the future.

Cathy Weber, a field service representative from the New Jersey School Boards Association, met with the board to help members identify and organize goals for the coming year, both for the board and the administration.

“The board’s role is to figure out what to do,” said Weber. “It’s the administration’s job to figure out how.”

Weber said that the main goal for the board is obviously to get the March referendum passed.

Several members of the board thought it important, to that end, to reach out not only to parents, but to other members of the public to ensure the referendum will pass.

“We have to try to reach everyone,” said board President Michael Kaye.

Communication with the community and the staff was at the top of every list, not just for the referendum, but for all aspects of school happenings.

The board was spilt up by Weber into three groups, and each group was given the task of answering questions like: “What has the district accomplished over the past 12 months?” and “What goals have yet to be achieved?”

“They never get to talk like this in small groups,” said Weber. “If they’re not on a committee with someone, they never really get to talk to each other. When they do get together it’s in a formal meeting.”

The board was also asked to project themselves inside the minds of teachers, students and the community to determine what those groups would like to see happen.

One goal that the entire board agreed on was to effectively communicate to parents and staff the board’s vision of the curriculum.

Board members agreed that, although there are pieces of the curriculum that may need some “fine-tuning,” as Kaye said, they are proud of the education that is being offered to the children of the borough.

The areas the board would like to see improved are math, language arts and world language.

Board members said they believe the district has been able to maintain a quality education while remaining fiscally responsible.

Full-day kindergarten is still in the process of evaluation, and physical education and music are in the process of being revised.

The board members all agreed that the issue that would be of utmost concern to both the staff and the community would be the curriculum.

Business Administrator Valery Petrone said she believes students would prefer better lunches, but until there is a better place to prepare the lunches, that cannot happen.

Weber helped the board distinguish between district goals, superintendent and board responsibilities.

A district goal, she explained, would be passing the referendum or passing the budget.

“This district has a history of passing budgets,” said Weber, “so that becomes more of a maintenance goal.”

Of course, as Petrone pointed out, the budget process this year will be much more difficult than in years past because of the new law S-1701, which has placed new restrictions on the school budget process.

The district saw the effects of the law this year, when after the budget was approved by voters, the district had to return any surplus over 3 percent of the budget to the taxpayers.

Each board member was asked by Weber to write down responsibilities the board and the administration should have as goals this year.

Many of the goals focused on passing the referendum and communication with staff and the community as a whole.

The next step will be for the superintendent to develop action plans to reach those goals.

“It’s a good idea if they reaffirm those goals and their action plans at a board meeting,” added Weber.