At an emergency meeting on March 22, the school’s board of trustees unanimously approved a Comprehensive Remedial Action Plan. The plan was drafted by the Remediation Planning Committee in response to the New Jersey Department of Education’s (NJDOE) decision to place the school on probation for 90 days.

The letter outlined 16 areas the school needs to improve on, including rigor of instruction, use of instructional time, up-to-date curriculum, classroom management and student discipline.

Assistant Dean Michele Bruce said she thinks everyone on the committee worked hard to prepare a comprehensive plan that will hopefully secure the status of the school. The focus of the Comprehensive Remedial Action Plan is to best serve the students, according to Bruce.

However, the success of the plan doesn’t rest on the commitment of the staff and administration, she said.

"As much as administration needs to work, students should be more invested in seeing us succeed,” Bruce said.

She said the school has been “a home for faculty and students” for many years and hopefully we can leave a “legacy.”

The action plan contains changes that will be made immediately, and those that will happen over the summer and next year.

Students are already experiencing the new sign in-sign out process that has been implemented to keep track of who leaves and enters the school building during lunch. Further changes to the school’s lunch program will happen next year, following the renovation of the school’s kitchen over the summer.

Teachers have begun using a new lesson plan template and lead teachers in each department are reviewing lesson plans. During the rest of the school year and over the summer, teachers will participate in professional development workshops on subjects like classroom management and maximizing instructional time.

In the coming weeks, administrators will begin making unannounced visits to classrooms. According to the action plan, this step is intended to create better accountability among both students and teachers and to give administration more information about strengths and weaknesses. Lesson plans will be reviewed and “monitored for rigor,” “alignment to” state standards, incorporation of “service learning” and “student feedback processes.” Over the summer, the English, math and science curricula will be revised.

To increase “student performance” the committee devised a three tier intervention system that will start next year. Tier 1 involves using “instructional techniques” to help students who are struggling. Tier 2 assists students with extra help during study halls. Tier 3 calls for students whose academic performance continues to be low to be referred to the Intervention and Referral Services committee.

Assistant Dean Sean Sawyer said the remedial action plan will be beneficial to the school because good schools should be able to point out any issues. He said seeing our mistakes and fixing them shows that we are structured well.

“The plan was a lot of work to develop, but the main objective is to provide a better education environment for students,” he said. “We reflected on improving."

Sawyer said he knew it would be a lot of work on improving the school, but he knows it will be worth it. He said the school was given a lot of time to strengthen minor things.
             
Social studies teacher Hans Winberg, who was a member of the committee, said he felt there was a solution to all the problems that the NJDOE pointed out.

“We could not cry about what was happening, we needed to save ourselves,” he said.
              
Winberg said the fate of the school is in our hands. He said the school needs to remain consistent, because everyone has not been following the rules, including teachers.

“The main focus was accountability,” he said.

According to Winberg, before the school was placed under probation, the students were making and following their own rules.

Winberg said he hopes the remedial action plan will show the state that the school community actually cares. He said he thinks they will “give the school a shot, but if we fail to abide by what we have designed, they could possibly shut us down.”