Glen Rock board hears new course proposals, phonics rollout and plans to restore high-school finals

The Glen Rock Board of Education on Thursday reviewed a suite of instructional proposals that could change course sequencing and student assessments and approved a planned K–3 phonics adoption.

Paul Cusack, supervisor of instructional educational technology and media center, presented a proposed sixth-grade seminar designed to help students transition to middle school. “We’re looking to create a quarterly course that helps to transition the students from elementary school to middle school,” Cusack said, describing modules in digital citizenship, media literacy and metacognition taught by media-center specialists. The course would be pass/fail, project-based and rotate with world-language classes in 2024–25, with a plan to add it to the published Program of Studies afterward.

High-school social studies sequencing was another major topic. Mr. Morelli proposed flipping the sequence so students take U.S. History 1 in ninth grade and move World History (with an added honors level) to the junior year, moving AP World History access to later in high school. “We would just switch the order,” he said, arguing the change would reduce the academic jump freshmen face when entering AP World as ninth graders and align instruction with the 2020 New Jersey Student Learning Standards.

Miss Gerlando, reporting on assessment work, recommended bringing back semester final exams (not midterms) in most high-school courses, with common assessments and a suggested 10% weight for semester-1 finals; students who sit for an AP exam would be exempt from the corresponding final. She said staff and student advisory groups supported finals as an experience that builds test-taking skills, while acknowledging concerns about added stress that the district would try to address with prep and flexible assessment formats.

On elementary literacy, a phonics committee that piloted two programs recommended adopting the Sunday System Essentials program for kindergarten through third grade starting September 2024. Crystal Lacroix, principal at Central School and a member of the pilot team, said teachers reported immediate transfer of phonics work into reading and writing and praised the program’s data components and online lesson materials. The district plans professional development at the start of the school year and will pilot materials for grades 4–5 next year before deciding on a K–5 rollout.

Administrators also briefed the board on other instructional items: a student-produced daily announcements proposal that would reallocate one minute from each class block into a shared time for a 5–6 minute recorded show (an independent-study course in 2024–25 and a course in 2025–26), and a middle-school science pilot selection (OpenSciEd) aligned to Next Generation Science Standards.

No formal votes were taken on the curricular proposals at the meeting; several items were scheduled for first-reading discussion and follow-up (including June first readings and a planned implementation timeline). The board indicated further work on logistics (schedules, staffing, professional development and contract implications) before final approval.

What’s next: the district expects to present the facility, staffing, and schedule details needed to implement the sixth-grade seminar and testing changes at subsequent meetings, and the K–3 phonics PD timeline was set for opening-of-school training in September 2024.