No Approved Curriculum Sends Barnegat School District Scrambling

BARNEGAT, NJ — Parents were surprised Thursday when they attempted to log into the portal to see their children's schedule for the upcoming school year and found nothing there.

The reason? The curriculum for the 2023-24 school year was not approved at Tuesday's Board of Education meeting, thus putting the entire Barnegat Township School District on hold.

There was no prior discussion at the meeting when board members Sandra Churney, Carol Geene, Scott Sarno and Lauren Washburn opted to vote "no" to approve the district curriculum.

While Board President Sean O'Brien, Bruno Iamonte, Bonnie Levy and Colleen Angus voted yes, the absence of Regina Tarnowski meant that there was no majority vote, and the motion failed. As of Tuesday evening, there was no approved curriculum in the district.

It wasn't clear why the four voted no, but the health and physical education curriculum was mentioned, which was the source of great controversy in the district last summer and was only approved in the fall. Read more: Sex Education Curriculum Passes Barnegat School Board Vote

Naturally, questions quickly arose about what to do. Extra work will need to be done - costing the district in excess of $15,000, according to O'Brien.

Existing courses will be able to fall back on last year's curriculum, though they may be out of compliance. But the district planned to introduce new electives at Barnegat High School that have no other option, O'Brien told Patch.

"As such, students would be sitting in those classes without instruction until a curriculum is approved OR those classes would be canceled and students would be reassigned to new classes," O'Brien said in an email Thursday.

The second option would be disruptive, he said, requiring significant work potentially including overtime and would further delay opening of the Parent Portal because new schedules would need to be created.

Administration held an emergency meeting Wednesday to discuss a plan to handle the "curriculum crisis," O'Brien said.

"Substantive changes" need to be made to each curricular document before it can be approved since the board did not approve it, O'Brien said, adding hours of extra work.

This needs to be done before a proposed special meeting, which the district wants to hold as early as possible to meet the rules for advertising and to allow the work to be done. They hope to hold the meeting Aug. 31.