Yesterday was the last BoE meeting before the election. It was an important occasion – the formal appointment of Dr. Nicholas DeStefano as our new permanent district superintendent. Coincidentally, our youngest son was at Daniel Webster Elementary School in Weehawken when Dr. DeStefano was the interim principal there. The board is clearly very enthusiastic about this hire, and that unanimity is a good sign. Hopefully Dr. DeStefano will have a long and successful tenure here, and will bring some much-needed stability to our schools after quite a bit of instability in the last year or two.
And yet, that’s probably not going to be what those who attended or streamed the meeting will remember1. Two issues highlighted the disconnect between Board leadership and the public. Putting the specifics of both issues aside, they highlight a concerning disconnect and a lack of engagement and consultation.
The track coach situation
I’ll be honest – I don’t thoroughly know the background on this issue, and so I’ll refrain from having a strong opinion on the substance2. It was reminiscent of the Great Basketball Coach Fiasco of 2024, which coincidentally involved many of the same people3. What I do know is that I was incredibly impressed by the combination of passion and polish with which many of our high school students and recent alumni highlighted what Coaches Weinberg and Gallo had done for them.
I strongly urge everyone to watch the recording of the meeting (link in the footnotes and also here) – the public comments start at 46:15. I myself wasn’t aware of the issue, and so have a comment awkwardly sandwiched in the middle on a completely different (but important) subject that I’ll discuss more below. The comments from the incredibly impressive students, and equally passionate and articulate parents, take about 34 minutes and are well worth your time. I’d then urge you to listen to the board’s official response, which starts at roughly 1:20:00 in case you needed to skip ahead, and contrast the different in substance.
As I said, not fully knowing what the underlying context and budgetary (or other) constraints are, I will refrain from expressing a strong opinion on the substance of precisely what stipends are allocated to different coaches. However, given both the surprise and the dismay of the most involved members of the community, I will say this – This board’s leadership claims to be basing its approach on “broad community input”, a phrase that appears verbatim in their campaign materials. If this is what a process based on community consultation and input looks like to them, I hate to imagine what a process that doesn’t explicitly involve the community would look like!
On restraining and secluding disabled kids
Let’s start with something really important, because this is a sensitive issue: the people who interact with students needing special services in our district are amazing. I feel very fortunate in the teachers and others that we have worked with. So this is NOT about accusing anyone, least of all our staff, of having any kind of negative intent. Rather, it is about the way policies are set, and the lack of communication with parents.
Presumably, the response of most people to “Should we restrain or isolate disabled kids” is “absolutely not”4. So why is it that Glen Rock explicitly allows for using restraint and seclusion techniques on disabled kids?
Let me explain, though you can also refer to my comment starting at 52:35 in the meeting video. To start with, New Jersey state law allows for the use of restraint and seclusion techniques on disabled5 students6. So, to forestall an obvious response, the district is not breaking the law in allowing this, and I am not claiming that it is doing so. However, and I have linked to the statutes below so you can verify this for yourself, the only states what a district needs to do if it chooses to allow for the use of either of these techniques. It does not mandate that a district use them. The statute is operationalized as Policy P55617 in our district. It is perfectly allowable, under state law, to have a P5561 that simply says “we don’t use those techniques”, end of story.
But it gets better8. If you are concerned that prohibiting these techniques would potentially cause safety issues for the student in question, other students, and staff – there is an entirely separate state law9 that governs the appropriate use of force in a school setting in such circumstances, that would override a prohibition on restraint or seclusion if judged necessary in an emergency or where safety is in question. So all that our current policy P5561 does is provide specific permission to restrain and/or seclude disabled children, including (and this is taken directly from the text of the regulation linked below) to prevent property damage.
So why am I bringing this up now, specifically? It is a really good case study of a few different things that plague this district.
First – this policy was on the agenda for last night. Specifically, it was item G410, which in and of itself consisted of adopting 13 separate policies, one of which was this one. The full text for the policy could be found on page 126 of a 241 page agenda document – though not easily, since it was apparently a scanned page that couldn’t be text-searched by my PDF reader. If the expectation is that parents – not trustees or candidate, parents – read through nearly 250 pages of text, which is usually posted on a Friday afternoon before a Monday meeting, that isn’t transparency. Hiding behind the technicalities of having it posted on a website is insufficient when something so consequential is buried so deeply. Additionally, there is no public visibility into the discussions that may have occurred that led to the decision that restraining or secluding disabled children is something we should be doing as a district.
Secondly, the text of the policy mandates that parents are informed yearly by the superintendent (or an approved delegate) that this policy exists. I can assure you that many parents whose kids are theoretically affected by this, including some of the most engaged parents on these issues, are categorically unaware of this. I would have been myself if the word “seclusion” hadn’t caught my eye as I was scanning through what seemed like a list of routine matters – and of course I didn’t catch it last year, or the year before, or… Again, this is emblematic of the lack of transparency and the lack of communication with the community11.
Finally, there is something I alluded to when I took a look at our district’s academic standards. It appears that what happened in this case is that the district has just gone along with what the default is for the state, in the same way that we’ve justified our academic performance by comparing it to the state average. New Jersey has one of the most permissive laws in the country on applying restraint or seclusion techniques to disabled children12. So why are we simply doing the easiest thing and using the standard legal boilerplate, rather than designing a policy based on the latest understanding of best practices, and in consultation with SEPAC and parents of affected kids?
What have we learned?
Again, I am NOT saying that anyone – trustees, staff, administration – has malicious intent towards disabled students. As I said, the actual people in contact with kids with special needs are wonderful. I don’t think anyone is rubbing their hands together and cackling about the thought of tying students up or throwing them in a closet.
What we have learned is something about transparency, communication, and complacency. Even on what should have been a celebratory day for the district, what stood out was the lack of importance according to community input. The way that the board’s policy-setting processes are opaque to everyone, including the most affected families. And the way that the board seems to measure itself against the low bars of others, rather than looking internally and being the best version of ourselves we can be.
We can do better. Let’s start now.
- You can find video of the meeting here. ↩︎
- Particularly as it wasn’t a clear inclusion on the agenda, and clearly came as a surprise to some trustees. ↩︎
- A summary – the board opted to hire a (male) coach from Brett Charleston’s old district over a (female) coach from in district who was also a Glen Rock High School alum, over the objections of virtually everyone. Three days later, they reversed the decision, carefully omitting mention of which trustees had voted for the other coach (hint: all three incumbents on the ballot now). You can see the minutes here, which included a trustee walking out and resigning in protest. As a bonus, you can see public comments about the lack of support for track and field, clearly not a new thing. ↩︎
- I’d like to hope so, anyway, though a lot of disability rights advocates are probably less sanguine about this. ↩︎
- Defined in state law here: NJ Rev Stat § 18A:46-1 ↩︎
- The specific statutes in question are NJ Rev Stat § 18A:46-13.4 to NJ Rev Stat § 18A:46-13.7. ↩︎
- The text of which can be found here; the associated regulation that provide definitions, details of required trainings, etc. is here. ↩︎
- Worse. ↩︎
- NJ Rev Stat § 18A:6-1 ↩︎
- The full agenda is here. ↩︎
- I typed that phrase and immediately wondered if they had a common root – and they do, Latin communis. Probably clearest to see in the word “commune” which could mean either a community or to communicate, depending. So communication is really integral to a community. ↩︎
- Georgia, Massachusetts and Hawaii ban both at the state level; most all other states have partial or total bans on either restraint or seclusion. ↩︎
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