Assembly Passes Bill to Move Board Elections

How to Influence Your Legislator

Administrative Cost Reduction Bill Passes Assembly

Travel Regs and Workshop: NJSBA Receives Clarification, Seeks More

Where We Stand with the Accountability Regulations

Delegate Assembly Opposes Supermajority On Second Questions

New President Calls on Board Members to ‘Set the Record Straight’

Scope of Negotiations Bill Stalled in Committee

Inside the State House with NJSBA’s Legislative Days

Special Education Week

New Board Member Weekend Orientation Conference

NJSBA’s First Live WebChat

Position Available: Field Service Representative

Board of Directors Highlights

Calendar

Click here for a pdf version of this issue of School Board Notes

As of Tuesday, the Department of Education had not yet issued a finalized version of the draft accountability regulations.

Commissioner of Education Lucille Davy told members of Leadership for Educational Excellence (LEE) on May 12 that several sections of the 205-page draft accountability regulations would be implemented as emergency, or “commissioner’s,” regulations, which would go into effect immediately upon publication.  (LEE is a coalition of the state’s major education organizations, including NJSBA.)

The Association has expressed – and will continue to express – school boards’ concerns about the regulations, which in some cases are punitive and contradict existing statute.

According to Davy, the subchapters dealing with the following topics would go in effect immediately:

• Budget review and approval by the Executive County Superintendent, including efficiency standards for review of non-instructional and administrative expenditures 
  
  
• Prohibitions against excessive or unreasonable expenditures, which in the draft include failure to meet benchmarks for obtaining reimbursement through the federal Special Education Medicaid Initiative, violations of public bidding law, and prohibitions against use of outside public relations firms and the employment of staff members whose exclusive responsibility is public relations.
  
  
• Conditions for the receipt of state aid, including efficiency standards, nepotism policies and internal financial controls.
  

The following areas of the draft will not be implemented through commissioner’s regulations:

• Travel/reimbursement policies.
  
  
• General powers of the executive county superintendent, including district consolidation/shared service plans, transportation efficiency and auditing;
  
  
• Administrator and board member accountability, including review of administrators’ contracts and public notice of contract alterations;
  
  
• Fiscal accountability; and
  
  
• Budget development, caps, waivers, budget transfers, surplus and reserve accounts.

Watch Budget Process The commissioner said the administration’s intention is to have all sections of the regulations in effect by September.  Therefore, sections not adopted as commissioner’s regulations may be put into effect as footnotes to the annual appropriations act (state budget) for 2008-2009, which the Legislature must pass by the end of June.