The Verona Board of Education meets tonight, Tuesday, December 11, and it could be your first chance to hear how the BOE is going to prioritize and pay for all the repairs that need to be made to the public schools.
At the BOE’s last meeting, Facilities Director Paul McDevitt identified up to $9.1 million in repairs that need to be done over the next five years, ranging from $100,000 in sidewalk fixes to as much as $4 million to turn the lower field at VHS–the baseball field that became the football field this fall after the sinkholes opened on Thomas J. Sellitto Field–into a multi-purpose sports complex. The BOE needs $2.5 million to fix the heating system at the high school and $450,000 to fix paving around the district. The computer infrastructure that supports all school operations, from instruction to administration, also needs to be upgraded.
The meeting’s agenda includes a presentation on grants made by the Verona Foundation for Educational Excellence, and the Verona High School fall sports awards. There will also be something on “Tomorrow’s Teachers”, which is one of the new classes instituted by Superintendent Steven A. Forte to give VHS students college credits for high school classes.
Forte will have a report on incidents of harassment, intimidation and bullying in Verona schools and there will be preliminary testing report on the 2011-2012 school year.
The BOE meeting begins at 8 p.m. in the VHS media center. All meetings are open to the public.
