After Jersey City high schools spent a year preparing to implement new court-mandated school reform models, the effort has been thwarted by a looming $2.1 billion state deficit that has frozen state aid at the current year’s level.
In an effort to freeze school budgets, the state Department of Education has put a yearlong hold on implementing “whole school reform models” in the state’s poorest districts, known as Abbott districts. Jersey City’s five high schools are now forced to revisit their budgets individually and find ways of reducing them to meet the old bottom line.
Jersey City had submitted a $596 million budget to the state for next year, but will have to revise it now to reflect the current year’s $543 million budget. Part of the increase was earmarked for consultants and other necessities to implement the new state-mandated reform models in the high schools.
“Whole school reform” was mandated by the state courts in 1998. It was part of the state Supreme Court’s interpretation of the 1990 Abbott v. Burke decision, which addressed the disparity in public education between wealthy and poor school districts. The state pledged to provide special aid for school reform in 30 urban districts. In 1998, the court required elementary schools in Abbott districts to implement state-approved educational “whole school reform” models.
Later, the requirement was expanded to high schools.
“The spirit of Abbott was to provide equity,” said Michael Littlejohn, director of whole school reform for the Jersey City schools. “We were able to acquire resources which were in line with what the suburban districts had.”
Site Management Teams (SMT) in each high school spent most of this past year adopting a model and preparing to implement it next year.
The process of adopting these models has substantial costs attached. Schools pay the companies that develop these models to train teachers during the planning process. For three years, the schools pay those companies for more training, on-site consultants, and teaching materials. Furthermore, the models outline an organizational model that the schools are required to follow. According to principals, these models often require the school to hire additional personnel, thereby adding more costs.
To be sure, the high cost of implementing whole school reform can be readily seen in the annual budget increases of elementary schools that began the process two years ago.
After announcing the one-year moratorium, the state Department of Education said that it would assess how whole school reform has affected the elementary schools that have implemented it so far. In the end, however, the state has promised to return funding for whole school reform models next year for elementary schools only.
Despite these budget cuts, the state has agreed to uphold the key principles of the Abbott decision, according to the attorney representing the Abbott school districts.
David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, said the state promised not to increase class size, keep the contract with whole school reform developers for next year, and retain an instructional facilitator in each school responsible for overseeing whole school reform.
Sciarra added that the state demanded that districts must prove the subsequent budget cuts must be reflected in the central offices as well as individual schools.
Disappointment at Dickinson
Making budget cuts is nothing new for Robert Donato, principal at Dickinson High School. Donato said that he had originally submitted a $24 million budget for Dickinson High for next year, but whittled it down to $18 million after a state review.
Donato estimated that $1.3 million of Dickinson High School’s budget for next year revolved around needs related to whole school reform. He said that he would have to cancel new hires he had anticipated.
While many educators in the public school system had doubted the court-mandated decision originally, the recent news has been a huge disappointment, as a full year of preparing to implement the required model appears to have been wasted.
Barbara Baletti, a guidance counselor at Dickinson, had many reservations about being forced to choose a model for the school.
“I believe change and reform can come from within,” Baletti said. “You have good people right in the schools that could affect change. Naturally, you had resistance on the part of the faculty.”
But as a member of the SMT, she spent many hours researching the six models the state allowed the Abbott districts to choose from in an effort to find the one that best suited Dickinson’s needs.
Choosing a model was like buying a car. Baletti said that many of the companies that had developed models were run like corporations, sending salesmen to pitch a product.
Eventually, the SMT picked Talent Development, a whole school reform model that emerged from John Hopkins University. This model would split the high school into different academies, a structure that resembled Dickinson’s present magnet program.
“Our problem is that our school is very big and we have to divide it into smaller communities,” Baletti said. “We had to find a way to incorporate what’s working into the model we’re supposed to adhere to.”
Among the many programs involved in the Talent Development model, the part that attracted most teachers was the Freshman Success Academy. Under this plan, the school would keep freshmen in one area of the building and provide a core curriculum that prepared students for life in high school.
Nina Melachrinos, a former ESL teacher who became the school facilitator for the whole school reform process, said that retaining freshmen had been Dickinson’s chief concern.
“We lose more than half of our freshmen by the time they are seniors,” Melachrinos said. “The Talent Development model attacked that problem of freshmen.”
Aside from choosing a model, the SMT strove to gain acceptance for this model from the rest of the faculty. “There was resistance,” Melachrinos said. “Because why fix something that was working?” According to Melachrinos, Dickinson had been improving its standardized test scores without having a whole school reform model forced upon it. But if anything was able to peak interest in this reform model, it was the Freshman Success Academy.
So the SMT, comprised of faculty, support staff, and parents, spent a year preparing to adopt the new model. The costly process involved giving students aptitude tests and placement exams, visiting schools in other states that have used the model, and attending seminars about the model that dealt with issues like scheduling, structuring classrooms, and using the company’s educational materials. Donato said that Dickinson spent $45,000 hiring Talent Development, but would have to pay for materials, seminars, and other parts separately.
But Dickinson did not get what it bargained for, according to the SMT. Baletti and Melachrinos agree that Talent Development failed to provide the necessary hands-on consulting that was expected.
“We expected a lot more from them [Talent Development] in the planning year,” Baletti said. “Most of the work was done by the SMT.”
Despite the temporary change in the state mandate, the SMT hopes to persuade the school district to allow it to implement the Freshman Success Academy with whatever limited resources are available.
“We just thought this was a great idea,” Donato said.
But the schools in the district do not only have to be concerned about putting proposed changes on hold, Donato noted. They also may have to cut existing programs. He said that salaries, insurance and energy costs always rise, so if the budget remains the same, the schools will have to look at more programs to cut.