The state Senate and the Assembly Education Committee this week agreed to NJSBA-advocated amendments to bills affecting the state monitoring process. The changes altered provisions that would have substantially increased the state’s authority under the NJ Quality Single Accountability Curriculum, or NJ QSAC.

The changes followed a joint statement by NJSBA, NJEA and the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association, which cited serious concerns.

Bring It Back The Senate Education committee released a version of the bill, S-2136, on Nov. 13. However, the full Senate on Monday approved the amendments, which were proposed by the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Ronald Rice, D-Essex. The action will bring an amended version of the bill back to the Senate floor for a second reading.

Meanwhile, the Assembly Education Committee made identical changes to another version of the bill, A-3676, on Monday. It voted the amended bill out of committee for action by the full Assembly in the future.

Amendments The associations pointed to two areas of legislation that, if approved, would have conferred virtually absolute powers to the state education commissioner and to “highly skilled professionals,” appointed by the commissioner, to work in any public school district under state intervention—even partial invention. The revised amendments include:

• “Highly skilled professionals” would no longer have the absolute authority, as previously proposed, to directly oversee the hiring, firing or promotions of district staff in the area of state intervention. Instead, the state education commissioner would make a recommendation to the State Board of Education for approval.
  
  The three state associations said that they believed that granting such unilateral authority, especially in relation to districts under partial state intervention, would have been an extreme and unnecessary infringement on the autonomy of local school districts.
  
  “Since highly skilled professionals are appointed directly by the commissioner, with no local district involvement, they represent a potential for a great abuse of power,” according to a letter the three associations sent lawmakers Nov. 30. “Furthermore, as in the case of current state takeover districts, they may represent an intrusion by individuals sent by the Department of Education to ‘fix’ perceived problems in a district and in a community about which they have little understanding.”
  
  
• Another proposal that would have given the education commissioner power to bypass the state’s Administrative Procedures Act for 36 months and adopt emergency regulations concerning NJ QSAC was reduced to 12 months and now requires that a community meeting be held. Had the proposal not been changed, the commissioner would have had the same emergency powers which, up until now, only had been authorized over Abbott districts and could have allowed any changes to go through without public input.