At its monthly October meeting, the NJ State Board of Education also announced the 2021-2022 New Jersey State Teacher of the Year, Ms. Theresa Maughan. Ms. Maughan teaches social studies at the East Orange STEM Academy. At Wednesday’s State Board of Education meeting, it was revealed that Maughan had been chosen for this honor from the 21 County Teacher of the Year honorees.
The other three finalists were: Lynne Bussott, a second-grade teacher at the Governor Charles C. Stratton School in the Swedesboro-Woolwich School District; Alyssa Geary, a special education and English language arts educator at Red Bank Middle School; and Faith Roncoroni, an English teacher at Phillipsburg High School.
At the monthly meeting, the Department also proposed amendments to N.J.A.C. 6A:15, Bilingual Education. The presentation to the Board may be viewed here. The proposed amendments will codify the ESSA requirement to standardize the use of multiple criteria to identify ELLs and the use of Statewide entry and exit criteria used by all LEAs in New Jersey for language instruction educational programs for ELLs and also will align the requirements for State assessment of growth in English proficiency with the ESSA. Click here for the full text of the proposed amendments.
Additionally the State Board of Education is currently accepting public comment on proposed amendments to N.J.A.C. 6A:32, School District Operations. Among the subchapters proposed for substantial change is 6A:32-7.1 et seq. This subchapter concerns student records and the interaction among FERPA, NJPRA and OPRA. The Proposal can be found here. Comments are due to the NJDOE on or before October 15, 2021.
The NJ State Board of Education will next meet again on December 1st.