District proposes new elementary grading scale and weights
The Oct. 20 agenda proposes replacing the previously approved elementary grading scale and weights for the 2026–27 school year.
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Saturday, October 24, 2026
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Latest New Jersey stories
Westfield Public School District
Westfield board considers calendars for the 2027–28 and 2028–29 school years
The board agenda proposes approving school calendars for 2027–28 and 2028–29; the records do not establish that the calendars were adopted. The 2027–28 calendar lists April 10, 11 and 12 as emergency make-up days, with unused days potentially converting to closures on June 16, June 15 and May 26, in that order.
Roxbury Township School District
Agenda proposes $1.267 million Lincoln Roosevelt classroom project
The Oct. 12 agenda proposes awarding the Lincoln Roosevelt School Classroom Alteration project to Northeastern Interior Services for $1,267,000, funded through Capital Reserve. The proposed award is pending attorney review and would amend or supersede a prior resolution from October 2025.
Clifton launches districtwide bike and e-bike safety initiative
Clifton schools are launching a communitywide effort to teach students and families how to travel safely by bicycle, e-bike, scooter and skateboard. Plans include hands-on riding clinics, helmet distribution, traffic-safety lessons and police-supervised rides.
Ridgewood Public School District
Ridgewood reviews a possible $140 million school-building upgrade package
The board reviewed a districtwide list of building upgrades that could be considered for a November 2027 referendum, but it did not approve the projects or a referendum. The preliminary list includes heating-system conversions and security vestibules, and board members requested more detailed costs and independent validation before deciding what to pursue.
Piscataway Township School District
ELA curriculum integrates foundational skills with reading and writing
A curriculum committee update describes a transformed ELA curriculum organized around weekly learning outcomes instead of end-of-unit reference expectations. Foundational skills are integrated with reading and writing, and grammar is embedded in the program rather than taught separately.
Piscataway Township School District
Proposed policy would end exclusion for head-lice nits
A committee report says the Policy/Legislative Committee approved a first-reading amendment to Policy 8454 for board consideration that would stop excluding students who have only head-lice nits. The proposal still requires proof of treatment to the school nurse and no evidence of active lice.
Old Bridge Township Public Schools
District proposes six dedicated spaces for 18–21 transition program
A Finance & Planning Committee presentation proposes converting existing rooms into six dedicated spaces for 18–21-year-old programming. The plan would repurpose library space, an art room and classrooms for transition planning, a commercial kitchen, social and apartment/living areas, and student training and work.
Collingswood Public School District
2026–27 calendar sets school dates and early dismissals
The Collingswood and Oaklyn school calendar sets September 3, 2026 as the first day and June 17, 2027 as the last day, with 181 student days. It also schedules elementary-only early dismissals for conferences October 27–30 and March 8–9, and secondary exam-day early dismissals June 9–10.
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Pennsauken Township School District
Board proposes to tear up the superintendent's contract and write a longer one
The board has given legal notice of a public hearing at its regular meeting on Tuesday, October 27, 2026 at 5:30 pm, at which it proposes to rescind Superintendent Dr. James Bevere's current employment contract - which runs from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2028 - and approve a new contract running from July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2030. The Executive County Superintendent has already approved the new contract. The public is invited to comment at the hearing, although the notice states the board will not publicly discuss personnel matters or respond to comments made. Nothing is decided yet: this is a scheduled hearing on a proposed action.
Twelve board meetings in the past year, and not one agenda or set of minutes can be read outside the district's own document platform
West New York publishes its board agendas and minutes only through BoardDocs. The platform's own meeting list shows twelve board meetings in the trailing year, on 29 October and 10 December 2025 and 14 January, 11 February, 18 March, 26 March, 22 April, 6 May, 17 June, 26 August and 30 September 2026, with the 6 May date carrying both a work session and the annual reorganisation meeting. Those documents cannot be stored here: BoardDocs answers requests for its files with a refusal that no amount of configuration changes. The district's own website carries no agenda or minutes archive, and its YouTube channel has published nothing about a board meeting since 2019 - its most recent board-related upload is a student presentation from November 2019. So everything on this page comes from the district's business-office, facilities and accountability pages and from state filings, and the record of what the board actually decided in the past year is not part of it.
Board considers $27.1 million new administration building
The Sept. 30 agenda proposed awarding T.N. Ward Company the construction contract for a new district administration building. The proposed $27,132,590 contract was listed to begin Oct. 1, 2026, and continue until the project is complete; the agenda does not establish whether the board approved it.
Bloomfield Township School District
The board's agendas and minutes cannot be read on this page
Bloomfield publishes its board agendas and minutes only on BoardDocs, an outside platform. A resident with a browser can read them there, but BoardDocs answers automated requests with an error on both of its addresses, so no agenda, no set of minutes and no attachment from any of the board's meetings can be collected and stored for this page. The district's own website carries budget presentations, contracts, policies, public notices and state reports, which is what this page is built from, and its YouTube channel has not posted a board recording since 2015. So the meeting record here is what the board published about its meetings, not what the board decided at them.
The district's accountability and audit pages stop in 2021 and 2022, and its performance results are only a link to the state
Three of the pages a resident would use to judge the district are years out of date. The quality single accountability review page carries a district performance review for 2020-21 and a statement of assurance for 2017-18, and nothing since. The business office's financial and audit page carries audited reports up to 2021-22, so the 2024-25 audit on this page came from the state's own filing rather than from the district. The school performance page carries only the state's standard letter telling families where the reports live, with no summary of West New York's own results. The district's comprehensive equity plan for 2025-2028 is posted, but as an image-only scan.
Brick Township Public School District
District's published budget summary is five years out of date
New Jersey requires every district to publish a user-friendly budget, a plain-language summary of where school money comes from and goes. The file behind Brick's own User Friendly Budget link is the 2021-22 summary, showing a proposed local tax levy of $115,659,937. The levy the board actually adopted for 2026-2027 is $142,640,431, about 23 percent higher. A parent using the district's link sees figures five budget years old.
Board asked to hand custodial work to an outside company
The agenda for the September 29, 2026 special meeting asks the board to approve subcontracting the district's custodial services to an outside company effective November 1, 2026, and to approve a settlement with the East Orange Educational Support Professionals' Association that ends the subcontracting negotiations and also settles the union's COVID-19 overtime lawsuit. The board opened this path on March 17, 2026 when it approved a resolution to consider subcontracting.
Edison Township Public Schools
John Adams has a new principal
Board members congratulated John Adams’s new principal during the Sept. 29 meeting. The transcript does not name the principal or give an effective date.
Livingston Board of Education School District
Livingston lists new and revised courses across K–12 for 2026–27
Livingston’s opening-of-schools report lists new and revised curriculum for 2026–27 across elementary, middle, and high school. Changes include AP Physics 2 and two AP Physics C courses plus AP Business Principles at Livingston High School; middle-school math offerings; and elementary ELA and science curricula.
Livingston Board of Education School District
Livingston's minutes never state a vote count, and closed-session votes are recorded without names
Every roll call in the district's approved minutes for the year is written as ayes by name with none against - Chirls, Cohen, Gong, Khemka, Yelisevich, the five voting members - and no numeric tally appears anywhere. That is enough to identify how each member voted on the main business, which many districts fail to do. The gaps are elsewhere: motions to enter closed session and to adjourn are recorded as 'vote all in favor' with no names, even where the agenda called for a roll call, which happened at both closed-session-only meetings and again in May; and the substance of most business reaches the minutes only as attachment references, so bill lists, stipend rosters, transfers and most personnel tables are named but not reproduced. Anti-bullying reports are accepted at nearly every meeting with no incident counts stated.
Matawan-Aberdeen Regional School District
Phones away bell to bell, and a real rulebook for AI
Two policies set the rules families live with. Policy 5516.02 requires internet-enabled devices to be off and stored in a backpack or locker from bell to bell, out of sight in classrooms, hallways, cafeterias and bathrooms, and collected outright during assessments; using a phone to bully or harass, even away from school, can cost a pupil the right to bring one at all. It was adopted in August 2024 and revised twice in 2026, in August and again in September. Policy 2365 covers pupils' use of generative artificial intelligence in schoolwork and requires the district to run an AI Plan naming which schools and year groups may permit it, when a teacher may authorise it, an approved-platform list, annual parental consent, and a list of prohibited uses including passing off generated work as one's own.
Collingswood Public School District
Not every school has a nurse, and the biggest one shares
Two school nurses told the board on May 18, 2026 that Collingswood has not had a nurse in every building since the 2023-24 school year, that the vacancy at William P. Tatem Elementary would not be filled and that the Garfield nurse post had gone, and that they are pulled between buildings because there are not enough substitute nurses. One described her daily medication rounds and pupils in her care with diabetes, a feeding tube and refractory epilepsy. In September, after the school year started, a district employee who is also a Tatem parent told the board the school now has a nurse about two and a half days a week and that the principal often fills in, and asked who is forecasting this. Another parent said the same night that the largest elementary school having a nurse only part of the week is less than it had before. The district hired one nurse in September, for Thomas Sharp.
Ridgewood Public School District
Superintendent is up for a new five-year contract through 2031
The September 28, 2026 board agenda sets a public hearing on renegotiating Superintendent Dr. Mark Schwarz's employment contract and a resolution to reappoint him for five years, from July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2031. His current contract was not due to expire until June 30, 2028. The Bergen County executive superintendent approved the proposed renewal on September 9, 2026, and the board gave public notice on August 27 and September 2.
Trenton Public School District
185 seniors were denied graduation, and most of those who graduated cleared the state requirement by appeal rather than by passing the test
Preliminary 2026 cohort data presented on September 28, 2026 records 185 students denied graduation from a twelfth-grade class of 794. Of those who did graduate, the numbers passing the state test directly were far smaller than the numbers cleared through the portfolio appeals process: at Trenton Central High School 261 in English and 105 in mathematics passed the test against 211 and 329 through appeals, and at Capital City High School 107 and 106 came through appeals. Separately, 2026 eleventh-grade results reported in August put graduation readiness at 38 percent in English and 28.4 percent in mathematics, and the district was told by the state that the results it received contained errors.
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