Mainly Supportive Crowd At Intermediate School Meeting Tuesday

Wall School district officials faced a crowd that was mainly amiable to a proposal that would bump some music instruction from the regular Intermediate School day next school year when it held the second of two meetings on the plans Tuesday night.

Several in the crowd of about 50 expressed satisfaction that the district was heading in the right direction with its plan to expand math and language instruction in the school, which has been tagged as a “School In Need of Improvement,’’ by the state Department of Education.

That proposal, however, would move at least one music instructional session each week to a before- or after-school period in favor of doubling the time pupils spend in math and language instruction. The proposal has rankled some parents in the district who have protested the move.

But at Tuesday’s two-hour meeting, audience questions focused mainly on the district’s curriculum, not the music proposal. That was a switch from the session held by the district on Monday, where many parents of music students turned out and that proposal was at the top of the list of audience questions.

District officials, including Curriculum Director MaryJane Garibay, said the school system’s entire curriculum was being revised, from kindergarten through 12^th grade, to begin addressing some of the district’s shortcomings.

“We looked at the data, and it is clearly evident that we needed to make some changes,” said Gary Azzolini, Intermediate School principal.

The district is proposing expanding to 80 minutes each the language and mathematics instruction in grades six and seven for the upcoming school year. Eighth grade students would have their math and language instruction bumped up to 60 minutes each, according to the presentation.

“This is a need,’’ said Tiffany Steiner, assistant Intermediate School principal, who said the increased time spent on the two subjects would allow for deeper understanding and, in turn, better testing performance. “We need to move ahead academically. It's necessary.”

The plan, however, would push music instruction to a before or after-school session once a week. Pupils would also be pulled from gym class once a week and could opt to cut short their lunch period for music practice, administrators said.

John Higham, assistant Intermediate School principal, said the school spends about 200 minutes a day on math and language instruction. Better performing similar districts spent significantly more, some double, according to his research.

Officials said the survey that soliciting opinion on whether parents of music students would prefer a before- or after-school session, at minimum once a week, would be put back up on the website. In the original survey, put up last week, parents overwhelmingly chose an after-school session.

Higham said the survey question dealing with the proposed new music time slot, Zero period received 47 votes, compared to 79 votes for after school and 66 votes for "other,'' which mainly called for keeping music instruction within the regular school day.

But following a talk given at the Monday session by high school music teacher Leslie Hollander -- who spoke in favor of the before-school or so-called Zero Period – officials decided to give parents a chance to vote again based on the new information. No date for the new survey was set Tuesday.

Not all parents are convinced the district has considered all options, however.

“What we have here is a false dichotomy,’’ parent Jim Boyle said at Monday’s session. “Everyone here is pitting music against instruction: you can have both. There are districts that do it. It may be hard, but you don't have to choose.’’

Boyle has distributed a sample schedule for the Intermediate School that does both. The proposed scheduled worked up by Boyle he says is similar to the one followed by Memorial Middle School in Point Pleasant Borough.

Memorial uses a 10-period day, where Wall Intermediate uses just 9 periods. But according to Boyle’s schedule, the Memorial school day is just 11 minutes longer.

By adjusting the time spent in each period from Wall Intermediate’s 41 minutes to a 38-minute period, the Intermediate school could add a 10^th period in the regular school day, keep music instruction and accomplish the district’s goal of having two periods of math and language instruction.

Administrators worked from a PowerPoint presentation during the first portion of each of the two meetings. There was no word on whether that presentation would be made available on the district’s website. It also did not appear that the audio from the meeting was being recorded, as it is at Board of Education meetings, which is also made available on the district’s website.