Information on Curriculum Progress - BoE Meeting 8/11/09

During the Board of Education meeting held on Tuesday August 11 a comment from a citizen in the audience during the public comment section of the meeting prompted this post. The initial statement by the person centered on the conjecture that citizens have been left in the dark about the curriculum- supposedly no one knows when it will be finished and it is yet another thing that gets talked about but never acted upon. Clearly, some communication on the topic is probably needed. Specifically, an objective response to the concern centering around the curriculum would include the following information:

1) As stated in public meetings to the Board of Education and to the public on at least 5 different occasions, the curriculum was and is scheduled to be completed and implemented in September of 2009 and used during the 2009-2010 academic school year.

2) Pilot testing of some of the curriculum took place in classrooms during this past school year.

3) All Board of Education members, all district administrators and all district teachers were given a draft of the final curriculum for their review and consideration in June. Detailed Powerpoint presentations with handouts were also made to each of these groups.

4) Via this blog, over 300 posts have been made centering on the progress of the curriculum. Hoboken Curriculum Project.com has been viewed 2, 732 times by Hoboken citizens and 4, 238 times by people working or living in New York City since it's inception in early 2008. The process has been open and transparent from the onset. Information about the curriculum has been disseminated and is both archived and readily available.

Hopefully, this will shed some additional light on the subject and provide detail to questions that some people may have. -Dr. Petrosino

Picture: Board of Education meeting- August 11, 2009