WESTWOOD, N.J.—The Westwood Regional School District started the new school year with color and energy, with incoming staff and students signing a new steel beam bolstering the Regional Middle School gym; the launch of an app promising “everything Westwood Regional, in your pocket”; and a staff convocation powered in part by graduates’ stories on equity and diversity.
The first day of school was Thursday, Sept. 5. The school board next meets Thursday, Sept. 26 at 7:30 p.m.
When the board convenes members might expect to hear from Westwood residents affected by a new borough ordinance, No. 19-11, codifying traffic and parking changes in the area of Berkeley Elementary School and designating a school employee parking zone.
The zone covers Westvale Park West parking stalls in the most westerly portion of the lot, parallel to Sand Road, and Sand Road East from a point 128 feet south of the westerly curb line of Harrington Avenue for a distance of 210 feet south.
According to the ordinance, no person shall park a vehicle there between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. on school days unless the vehicle has displayed from its rear view mirror a valid and current employee parking hang tag.
Board members also might hear anew from parents who have been pressing to know the district’s plan to accommodate an influx of school families—assuming a subdivision long proposed for Van Emburgh Avenue in the Township of Washington clears the planning process.
School Superintendent Raymond A. Gonzalez said demographics and facilities would continue to be reviewed and that the district would continue to work with families to ensure safe pick-ups and drop-offs.
Construction on the $24 million Regional Middle School expansion, approved by district referendum Dec. 12, 2017, is on track for a September 2020 grand opening, Gonzalez said.
He said in Cardinal Connection, the district’s monthly e-newsletter, “It felt like just yesterday I was bidding farewell to the graduating Class of 2019 and now I find myself welcoming the incoming Class of 2032. Where did the time go?”
The same resource touches on the district’s goals for 2019–2020 in student achievement, strategic planning, facilities and fiscal planning, data driven decision-making, and communications, and includes many more details for school families new and seasoned.
It also reports that the district’s school safety and security specialist, a 30-plus year veteran of law enforcement, will be permitted to carry a firearm beginning this year.
“In addition to the cooperation we have with local and county law enforcement, this measure serves as another means of supporting our schools in the event of an unthinkable emergency,” Gonzalez said.
The traffic and parking changes, which have alarmed up to 22 families neighboring Berkeley Elementary School, were adopted 6–0 at the Westwood Borough Council meeting of Sept. 3 after being worked out in public sessions over a year and put in place on a trial basis.
Property owners along Berkeley Avenue between Harrington Avenue and Lowell Street had argued to restore two-way traffic.
They said at the July 16 council meeting that part of a Berkeley School-area traffic flow overhaul enacted by resolution, which made Berkeley Avenue one-way at all hours year-round, was foisted on them and is dangerous and inconvenient.
The council, aiming to have a safe, legal, and workable solution in place by the start of the school year, introduced and adopted the plan as the best available.
Gonzalez said the district would “continue the dialogue” with families and municipal officials.”
Michael Pontillo—the borough’s police chief, a district parent, and a challenger for school board—has praised borough efforts to ensure safe transitions at the school. He has suggested the school administration’s participation in the plan was lacking.
He credited police Lt. Richard Antonacci “for all of his hard work and dedication in seeing this project through from its inception to its logical conclusion.”
Moreover, he took issue with Mayor John Birkner Jr. issuing a veto letter targeting a portion of the ordinance to do with Harrington Avenue parking.
Where Birkner had said he was duty-bound to reject a part of the ordinance in light of “a procedural flaw … information that didn’t match what we were given from the county,” Pontillo assailed him in a statement to Pascack Press as offering “unjustified theatrics.”
Pontillo thanked the governing body for the ordinance “and understanding that all along Harrington Avenue was a part of the overall traffic plan in the area, which provided space for parent pick up and extended drop off.”
He said “The ability to make the area safer came from cooperation from the County of Bergen and Westwood Police Department. We got the parking stalls striped and the center line moved because of parent safety complaints derived from their experiences picking up and dropping off their children.”
According to Pontillo, “Not having this ordinance in place prior to the start of the school year would have been irresponsible and a detriment to the safety of all parties involved.”
Lowell Street residents Maryellen and Mark Yale spoke at the recent school board meeting to express their disappointment.
They said in part of the Harrington Avenue parking measure, “The county will never approve long-term parking on a county road. So once again if your teachers choose to park there all day, they may still be ticketed for violating the 2–3-hour parking rules.”
They also complained that students had vandalized and stolen from their property “while their parents watch and say nothing,” and that “Parents park in front of the only fire hydrant on the block without any regard for our safety.”
The couple also alleged that school parents block neighborhood driveways “so we can’t even get in or out of our homes” and that offenders have cursed at them “right in front of their own kids.”
With a buzzer pointedly indicating that Maryellen Yale’s allotted five minutes to speak had elapsed, she got in a plea for Berkeley School to “come up with some plans to move drop off and pick up onto your own property. That’s the only way to control things and keep the children safe.”
She added, “We would like our street and our neighborhood back.”