The Lakewood Board of Education will be holding a special meeting this week at the Lakewood High School.

The primary purpose of the meeting is to discuss the recently issued QSAC Report, the operations of the District’s Business Office, and other Board Business.

Initially, the topics for this meeting were scheduled to be discussed at the upcoming Board meeting in January, however, Board President Moshe Bender told TLS that he “wanted to move the meeting up before the Holiday break as some of Lakewood’s Administrative staff graciously work during the Holiday break and I wanted additional solutions and innovative answers to be ready when we all return in January.”

Numerous presentations will be made by the District Monitors, Superintendent Laura Winters, General Counsel Michael Inzelbuch, Curriculum and Department Heads, etc.

There will also be a Motion made to immediately commence the process of seeking appropriate funding from the State and an overall change to the funding formula based on the unique.

According to General Counsel Inzelbuch, “The purpose of this is to hopefully avoid the yearly shortfall in May and June causing hundreds of staff to receive ‘RIF’ ( reduction in force) notices that only further serves to destroy morale ,and, causes many teachers trained with Lakewood tax dollars to seek employment elsewhere . Enough of this. Also, the Governor elect is in the process of putting together his Budget and Lakewood needs to be in there.“

State and County officials who participated in the QSAC process, have been invited to attend the meeting.

According to General Counsel Michael Inzelbuch the Board is “on the upswing despite numerous issues facing our kids and community.”

Inzelbuch noted that, for example, the Audit comparison prepared by Monitor Michael Azzara, who despite significant health issues, continues to monitor the district and is always available for his input and constantly provides direction, demonstrates significant improvement.”

Specifically, in comparing Audit Recommendations for the years 2013-14, 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17 there is a clear, steady, and significant decline in negative Audit findings as determined by an outside third party Auditing Firm.

2013-14 –31 Audit Findings

2014-15 –17 Audit Findings

2015-16 –9 Audit Findings

2016-17 –6 Audit Findings

The meeting will take place at 7 pm Thursday at the Lakewood High School.