Montville School Board President on Race to the Top Loss: It's a Disappointmet

When asked about her reaction to New Jersey's recent failure to receive a federal grant to fund school reform, Montville Board of Education President Dr. Karen Cortellino explained her reaction in baseball terms.

 "It would be one thing if we lost by a great amount of points," she said. "You know, when it's a blowout and you lose, there is a sense of 'oh well,' but when it's this close, it is a disappointment."

On Tuesday, Aug. 24, the U.S. Department of Education accounted the winners of its second phase of the "Race to the Top" grant competition, designed to reward states pushing for specific educational reforms. New Jersey was ranked 11th on the list, three points behind Ohio for grant money—too low to make the cut.

In the following days, it was revealed that the application for the grant filed by the governor's office featured a clerical error that cost the state 4.8 points, more than enough to close the gap between New Jersey and Ohio. In a release, Gov. Chris Christie first said that the mistake was " a simple clerical error in putting together an application of this size."

"It asked for a comparison of 2008 to 2009 numbers, it was placed in there as a comparison between 2010 and 2011 numbers, one piece of paper," he said. "Am I happy about it? Of course not. The commissioner isn't happy about it and the folks who are responsible aren't happy about it either."

The governor also expressed his disappointment with the federal government for not notifying the state of its error.

Christie said Wednesday that he was told the state had attempted to provide the correct budget information during a presentation earlier in August,  but the state wasn't allowed to do so. After the U.S. Department of Education released a video Thursday showing that wasn't the case, Christie fired Education Commisioner  Bret Schundler.

While Cortellino said she did not want to involve herself in what "will be a very political issue," she did say she was surprised at the events.

"The governor said that the federal government should have called, but when you're filling out a grant application, there is an expectation that the application will be perfect," she said. "It's not like you get do-overs with these kinds of things."

According to Cortellino, the added money would have been a welcome addition to the district, which saw its budget cut by nearly $1 million dollars earlier this year. However, she says the board will continue to do its best to work with the money it has.

"Our share of state aid was three million dollars," she said. "We substantially support our school budget by local tax levy, and we're doing the best we can with that. We've got a lot of talent in this district at the teacher and administration levels. Our community really cares about education, and we're going to get through this."

She said that one of the results of the board's reduced budget has been an inability to add new courses to the school curriculum coupled with the reduction of some extra curricular activities.

"For the first time in years, the board of education couldn't introduce any new programs to the curriculum," she said. "The curriculum wasn't touched. Most of the cuts we had to make were to extracurricular activates, and we couldn't add new programs, which is disappointing for us, but the curriculum wasn't touched."

The next board of education meeting is scheduled for Aug. 31.