Elizabeth Public Schools

Awards, recognition and rankings

In 2015, Elizabeth High School was one of 15 schools in New Jersey, and one of nine public schools, recognized as a National Blue Ribbon School in the exemplary high performing category by the United States Department of Education.

In the 2008-09 school year, Victor Mravlag Elementary School No. 21 was recognized with the Blue Ribbon School Award of Excellence by the United States Department of Education, the highest award an American school can receive. For the 2006-07 school year, William F. Halloran Alternative School #22 was one of four schools in New Jersey recognized with the Blue Ribbon Award. William F. Halloran Alternative School #22 earned a second award when it was one of 11 in the state to be recognized in 2014 by the National Blue Ribbon Schools Program.

In 2007, Dr. Albert Einstein Academy School No. 29 became one of 24 schools selected from across the United States and the only NASA Explore School in the state of New Jersey at that time.

In the 2012 "High School Challenge" published by The Washington Post, a continuation of high-school rankings formerly published in Newsweek, ranked Elizabeth High School as the best public high school in New Jersey, and the 76th-best in the United States.

History

Battin High School was constructed in 1913 at 300 South Broad Street on the site of a mansion that had been donated to the city nearly 25 years earlier by Joseph Battin, president of the Elizabethtown Water Company, and namesake of the school. Originally operated on a coeducational basis, the school became female only starting in 1929, after Thomas Jefferson High School was constructed and dedicated to serve male students. In 1977, district officials stated that the inability to determine attendance zones for the two comprehensive high schools after Thomas Jefferson High School opened in 1929 combined with the expansive shop facilities in the new building, led the district to decide to split students by sex, with girls at Battin and boys at Thomas Jefferson. By 1972, Battin was the only public high school in New Jersey operated exclusively for women, despite coeducational programs at both Princeton University and Vassar College. By that time, a policy under which pregnant students had been required to withdraw from school had been eliminated and students were allowed to return to school after giving birth and attending a special off-site program during their pregnancy. Though 40% of graduating students went on to college and district officials insisted that the curriculum was standard across the district's separate high schools, a student criticized the difference in expectations of male and female students, noting that "Boys are expected to be engineers and attorneys. Girls are supposed to be secretaries and mothers."

Battin High School and Thomas Jefferson High School were both closed at the end of the 1976-77 school year, after the Elizabeth High School complex was completed and all of the district's students, male and female, were accommodated at the new four-building facility, ending the city's status as "the only community in the state with separate public high schools for boys and girls". The $29.3 million project included renovations to Thomas Jefferson High School, which was integrated into the new complex. The Battin High School building, together with the four existing junior high schools, was repurposed as a middle school for grades six through eight.

Schools

Schools in the district (with 2011-12 enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics) are:

Board of Education

The district, with more than 26,000 students, is one of the New Jersey's largest school districts. The $507 million budget is mostly subsidized by state aid, which accounts for 82.6% of the district's budget, while property taxes cover 11.6% of the budget.

The district is governed by a nine-member board elected in non-partisan elections. In recent years, the school board has had a majority led Rafael Fajardo, a former school board president who has at least six family members on the payroll. Although he is no longer on the panel, Fajardo controls the school system with the support of five current members: Ana Maria Amin, Elcy Castillo-Ospina, Tony Monteiro, Paul Perreira and Carlos Trujillo. Opposing the Farjado group are Charlene Bathelus, Maria Carvalho, Stan Neron and Jose Rodriguez.

Controversy

In June 2011, the Union County Prosecutor's Office was investigating charges that members of the school board gave jobs and promotions to employees in exchange for political contributions. Republican members of the New Jersey General Assembly asked for records relating to district spending for entertainment, travel, equipment and other expenditures.

The Investigations Unit of the New Jersey Department of Education reviewed district practices in 2008, following a state auditor's report that undocumented aliens were being improperly hired by the district in custodial and clerical positions. The district's business administrator indicated that the district had been hiring non-citizens for math and science teaching positions due to the inability to find qualified citizens qualified to work in those positions. . Other findings had shown that $88,000 was spent by the district for what was deemed to be political advertising and that employee information had been taken from confidential files to be used for soliciting political contributions.

Some other recent headlines include:

Administration

Core members of the district's administration are: