By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
OCEAN CITY – Responding to parent concerns, one administrator said the district isn’t making excuses, has looked at every option and already is doing everything it can for students.
After parents spent about an hour speaking about their children’s education at the Nov. 18 Ocean City Board of Education meeting, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Kathleen Taylor and Curt Nath, director of academic services, said they were taking copious notes as the parents spoke and addressed some of the suggestions and criticisms.
Asked about the idea of adding more space to get more in-person teaching, Taylor questioned district Business Administrator Timothy Kelley about what that entails and noted the cost involved. Kelley said any space a district adds has to meet a range of state requirements and must be overseen by a certified teacher. “The list is quite voluminous,” he said.
Because new certified teachers would have to be added, according to Taylor, Kelley said a single starting teacher, with benefits, would cost about $70,000 annually.
“If you’re adding other sections, you’re adding other teachers,” Taylor confirmed with Kelley.
Nath, asked to speak to restrictions on virtual learning, started out by saying the district was not making excuses.
“To me the term excuse is a term of rhetoric. I think we have to understand within the confines of feedback, the confines of planning, and the confines of needs assessment, an excuse is something you would use if you had a clear and obvious choice or answer that you could apply and you refused to do that,” Nath said. “I can say with certainty we have not provided excuses nor have we neglected our duties to look at every option.”
Nath explained that he is an analytical and data-driven guy. “I do not make a statement without looking at it from every side in multiple scenarios.”
He said he loved the feedback from parents, “but almost every one of these things is things we have considered.”
As an example, he said the idea of adding space brings with it additional variables that must be addressed. As Kelley noted the expense of certified teachers, Nath said certified teachers can’t be found in New Jersey. “On a daily basis, we are short just substitute teachers in double digits. They just do not exist. This is not an excuse. This is a fact.”
Nath blamed the certification process and background check as slow-moving and that the district put forth potential substitutes back in July and August and the district still does not have certification for them. Taylor noted that process is handled outside the district. “We don’t issue certifications. We don’t issue fingerprinting,” Taylor said. “They have been big stumbling blocks for us.”
Nath said it was wrong to compare Ocean City with other districts.
He said his wife is a teacher in another district and their three children go to school in another district. His twins, in kindergarten, have only been in school for four days this year. Otherwise, it is all virtual. Ocean City has had a hybrid schedule allowing students to be in school two days a week since the beginning of September.
Nath said he is a founding member of the South Jersey Data Specialists Group that was created three years ago for data-driven informed decisions, to get school districts together to plan ahead. He said he is in communication with the technical directors of all the surrounding school districts.
“So if there is a belief we are operating in isolation in any capacity, I apologize for that,” Nath said. “We did not set up a barricade at our bridges and simply deal with our own environment.”
He said the districts are sharing information.
“If we are mentioning what one or two other school districts are doing, I would consider that an area of statistical denial,” he said, adding there are more than 200 school districts in the state that have not opened their doors to students this fall.
“Two islands up,” he said, the school district just opened its doors only to have the teachers walk out en masse. “We haven’t had that. We have had the longest school day for students in a K through 12 environment in the region, if not in the state.”
“We would love to be here five days a week,” Nath said. “From the standpoint of the district, if you want an excuse, the easiest thing to do is bring kids in five days or have kids virtual five days. The absolute hardest thing to do is to operate in multiple situations with multiple scenarios with multiple schedules. It is trying to do a job in three different ways and trying to be an expert at doing that job at the same time.”
He said if there were an answer, they would look at it. The district recognizes the value of the in-person instruction and is focusing on that, within the guidelines that are set up. He said the half-days in the middle of the week are there so staff members have time to record instructions for the virtual days. He reminded the public that the teachers are actually doing in-person instruction four days a week – two days a week for each cohort – even though students are only in school two days a week.
He said the district is concerned about the mental health of the students, but also of the teachers and staff.
Nath suggested the parents are concerned about themselves and their children, but not the staff.
“I hear all these great comments, and thank you for the feedback,” he said. “Unfortunately I hear all these negative comments, how the pandemic has affected you as an individual, you as a parent. I’m just curious at times why there isn’t the understanding and the recognition that also extends to us?”
Adding that they face the same problems as parents, Nath said, “We are absolutely doing everything we can to do everything we can for our students.”
“We are very effective in full-day instruction,” Taylor added, “but living in this three-dimensional world is very challenging.” She said the district is working on finding a way for teachers to better connect with students on virtual days, but it is difficult with the teachers working full days four days a week.
“It is an issue we’ve been talking about, trying to problem-solve,” she said. “We’re not stagnant. It may seem it, but we’re not.”
She said there are good things coming with the education going on, especially parent involvement and engagement with their children’s education, and she doesn’t see that changing once the pandemic restrictions are over.
“We’re never going back to the way it was before,” she said. “You can’t. This has been so traumatic and dramatic we’ll never go back to the way it was.”
School board member William Holmes said he was just waiting for Gov. Phil Murphy to make all schools go all-virtual in light of the explosion of new COVID-19 cases in New Jersey,
“It’s coming. It’s just a matter of whether it’s next Wednesday or the week before Christmas … everybody hold on, buckle up, we’re getting there,” he said, asking if the district has a plan for that.
Taylor said each school in the district has a plan for how to handle that, but she hoped that it would not come to pass.
