Hoboken Patch reports that Hoboken High School's principal was hired to work in the Hopatcong school district on Monday night (July 23), during a heated Board of Education meeting. According to PATCH, Ms. Noreen Lazariuk accepted less money than she earned guiding Hoboken High School to become Hopatcong High School's principal. Lazariuk, who only spent the 2011-2012 school year leading Hoboken High, said on Monday night that she looked forward to the challenge Hopatcong presented. "I'm still kind of processing it," she said. "I'm happy and excited." Last year, when taking the Hoboken High School principal position, Ms. Lazariuk was quoted as saying, "Whenever I take on a new challenge, I really just pour myself into it,” she said. “I’m very proud to be the next principal of Hoboken High School.” Best of luck to Ms. Lazarluk as she pours herself into her new challenge at Hopatcong. The Hoboken Board of Education now faces the recently familiar and seemingly ongoing task of finding a new high school principal. This time around for the 2012-2013 school year. The anticipated hire will be the fifth principal or interim principal at Hoboken High School in the past six years and the fourth Hoboken High School principal or interim principal in the past 30 months. The district has also seen 4 superintendents or interim superintendents in the past 3 years.
As many regular readers of this blog know, the political group known as "Kids First" have majority control of the Hoboken Board of Education and have held primary responsibility for the advertising, searching, appointing, interviewing, renewal and non-renewal of district and school level administrators and supervisors since April 2009. Their use of micro-management techniques coupled with alleged punitive actions characterized by the Hoboken Reporter as "fear and loathing in the Hoboken schools" by "Kids First" are fairly well documented and have likely had consequences in terms of student achievement, discipline, faculty development, and implementation consistency of school and district wide curricula efforts.
How does this relate to HHS or the Hoboken School District? In November of 2011, for the first time in its history, the Hoboken School District was classified as a "District in Need of Improvement" by the State of New Jersey and the US Department of Education. Research literature in educational administration and education policy would certainly connect the recent and excessive turnover of school and district level leadership (and their reasons for leaving) as a contributory factor in designating the entire school district in need of improvement. -Dr. Petrosino
