School District Central Office Back Online, BOE Meets Monday

The Fort Lee School District’s central offices finally got back online Monday at about 5 p.m. after more than a week without Internet or Intranet connectivity resulting from the previous weekend’s snowstorm.

That enabled the Fort Lee Board of Education to publish the agenda for Monday’s regular business meeting on the school district’s website.

The school board approved the following resolutions at the meeting—full details and backing documentation of which can be found by clicking here:

Editor's Note: Fort Lee Patch will take a much closer look at some of the issues raised at the school board's regular business meeting in a subsequent article this week so stay tuned.

BOARD

• 1B - Resolution Regarding School District Report Of Incidents Of Harassment/Intimidation/Bullying
• 2B  - Settlement Agreement – Residency Issue
• 3B  - Settlement Agreement – Parisi Architects

BUILDING and GROUNDS

• 1B&G - Submission Of Annual Required Comprehensive Maintenance Plan
• 2B&G - Revised Rental Agreement For Fort Lee High School
• 3B&G - Approval Of SSP Architectural Group To Submit Plans For Classrooms
• 4B&G - Lease Agreement For 2175 Lemoine Avenue

CURRICULUM and INSTRUCTION

• 1CUR - Approval Of Class Trips For A Total Cost To The District Of $1,350.00
• 2CUR - Approval Of Computer Logic Group Report Card Services
• 3CUR - Approval Of K-12 Report Card Formats

FINANCE

• 1F - Approval – Current Bills List
• 2F - Approval – Line Item Transfers – September 2011
• 3F - Approval Of Closing Petty Cash Bank Account

HEALTH, WELFARE and SAFETY

• 1HWS* - Payment Of Home Instruction Services
• 2HWS - Bayada Nurses, Inc. As Additional Related Service Provider For 2011-2012 School Year

PERSONNEL

• 1P* - Approval - Staff Trips And Conferences For A Total Of $695.04
• 2P - Resignation Of Thomas Curry As Part-Time Physical Education Aide At School No. 2
• 3P - Personal Leave For Lori Lecarl As Bsi Teacher At School No. 1
• 4P - Maternity Leave For Francesca Marotta (Baccan) As High School Foreign Language Teacher
• 5P - Maternity Leave For Crystal Tuozzolo As Elementary Teacher At School No. 4
• 6P - Maternity Leave For Stephanie Borgono As School Social Worker For The Child Study Team
• 7P - Salary Adjustment For Mary Vincenti As Part-Time Classroom Aide At School No. 1
• 8P - Rescind Ada Acosta As Faculty Coordinator For The 2011-2012 School Year
• 9P - Revised Appointment Of Anti-Bullying Specialist At School No. 2 For The 2011-2012 School Year
• 10P - Appointment Of Patrick Ambrosio As District Title IX Coordinator For 2011-2012 School Year
• 11P - Appointment Of Annmarie Corcione As Part-Time Preschool Teacher At School No. 1
• 12P - Reappointment Of Michelle Mcinerney As Special Education Teacher At School No. 1
• 13P - Transfer Of Jaritza Beato As Classroom Aide From Flecc To School No. 2
• 14P - Transfer Of Alyssa Bozzetti From Part-Time To Full-Time Classroom Aide At FLECC
• 15P - Appointment Of Stephan Lastra As Part-Time Physical Education Aide At School No. 2
• 16P - Appointment Of Linda Mulligan As Part-Time Human Resource Confidential Administrative Assistant
• 17P - Rescind Resolution No. 24586 For The Additional Co-curricular Activities For Chess Club And Wind/Drill Instructor
• 18P - Appointment Of Additional Co-Curricular Personnel For The 2011-2012 School Year
• 19P - Additional Substitutes For The 2011-2012 School Year
• 20P - Appointment Of Lea Iuculano As Part-Time Classroom Aide At Fort Lee Early Childhood Center

POLICY

• 1POL - Adoption Of Policy/Regulation Updates

Earlier in the Day Monday

The school district's central offices on Whiteman St. remained without Internet connectivity since the snowstorm that knocked out power to thousands in the borough on Oct. 29 and 30, school officials said Monday morning.

Acting Superintendent of Schools Steven Engravalle said repairs were ongoing to a fiber-optic line that connects the central offices to a server at Fort Lee High School, and that school officials hoped to have Internet restored to the central offices later in the day.

“All of our servers are housed at the high school,” he said. “The actual fiber-optic connection that connects us to our server at Fort Lee High School, which does provide our Internet access, was severed in two locations, we found out. Not only was it the initial location, [which] was immediately visible [and] no one began working on due to the heavy workload until Thursday, but they thought they had it repaired by Friday afternoon, and it still didn’t work. They traced the line back, and further down the block, they found another break that required repair.”

In the meantime, Engravalle said at the time, anyone who’s been trying to email the central office has been getting a “pretty spotty” response at best, and the agenda for Monday's Fort Lee Board of Education regular meeting had yet to be posted on the BOE's website Monday because both the Internet and Intranet were down and many of the files needed to complete the agenda, such as supporting documentation for various resolutions, are stored on the district's server.

“I would encourage them to call with anything imperative until at least [Tuesday],” Engravalle said. “So if there is any type of emergency, if anyone is looking for a copy of our agenda [for the BOE meeting], please give us a call. Our fax line still works; I’m able to fax something out, or they can stop in.”

Engravalle said crews worked on Saturday and Sunday, but as of Monday morning school officials could only hope that they would be back online "as soon as possible."

“Basically what we have is further proof of what type of backup, emergency management plan we need to have in place,” he said. “We apologize for the inconvenience, [but] we’ve really been crippled by this.”