At the Board of Education meeting, parents demand health and safety report card.

On Thursday, Nov. 20, more than 30 parents and a dozen children assembled at the Board of Education meeting to tell Charles Epps, Jersey City School District Superintendent, and members of the Board of Education that parents have a right to know the health conditions of the schools their children go to. At the meeting, parents told the Board to adopt PCUE proposal for health and safety report card for each school in Jersey City.

Below you can read PCUE statement at the meeting. The pictures from the PCUE action can be viewed in the next two blogs.

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Dr. Epps, Members of the Board, Parents, and Visitors

Hello,

My name is LueElla McFadden. I am President of the Parents and Communities United for Education (PCUE). I am also a great grandmother of a child in School # 38.

Dr. Epps, we received your letter yesterday (hand delivered to our office) regarding the lead remediation. We are glad that the facility department has been taking care of the lead problem and a second set of testing is planned to take place. Dr. Epps, we thank you and all board members and also all our hard working maintenance and custodial workers who do their best to keep our schools in good conditions.

One thing we would like to see happen is that we want PCUE to be notified of the progress being made in regard to the water situation. But the most important thing here is to have parents be notified through internal flyers sent home by school students and it should be done in a timely manner. This is a must. We would like you to ensure that all principals in the district have these flyers go out with the students, and we will, of course, notify all our parents that we are in contact with on a daily/weekly basis.

We would like to extend a special thanks to Mr. DeRosa, Ms. Sue Mack, Mr. Dehere and Mr. McCann who met with us to talk about our proposal regarding a Health and Safety Report Card for each school. Why is the report card important? It is important because it will ensure that the parents and students are notified and aware of the conditions of each school and to bridge the communication gap between our parents and the School District.

Our goal is to have the report card put into policy to ensure that all Jersey City schools are safe and healthy for our students. A mere adoption is not enough. We want it to be a policy so that there is accountability and that it can be enforced. We understand that there is a process involved in bringing such an idea to fruition and that it is a collaborative effort, but we need you to realize the importance of the policy to the parents.

We need you and all board members to know how important it is that parents are and must be involved in the school walk-through. We also want to make sure that this report card is issued semi-annually.

The creation of this report card is very important to all concerned. It will bring the kind of healthy and safe environment that is urgently needed in our public school system today.

Thank you and we are looking forward to working with you to make our schools a better place for all our children.