They met last night. The approved athletic field and new light for the fields. We are a very high tax town do we truly need this? It is nice to have but I would have certainty rather get a small tax rebate. I would mind paying my school taxes a lot less if the money was much more focused on going towards quality instruction in the classroom.

Our schools are failing, scoring in the bottom thrif of all schools in NJ academically, several WO schools are on the watch list for repeatedly failing to meat national basic skills testing standards...perhaps the time has come to spend a little less time on the field under the lights and more time in the classrooms and studying at home. When will the WOBOE own up to the fact that they are failign the children and families of West Orange? It is time to focus on basic learning and not be spending all of our time in athletics and extracurricular activities, this would cut down on the need for the new fields and lighting.

WO Schools are failing miserably and the answer of the WOBOE is to provide astroturf and lights. How utterly irresponsible.

wohopeful Great comments. Beginning in the 2014 - 2015 school year, another standardized test will be added to the tests already in place.The test will be roughly 3 hours in length. "But not all educators and parents are convinced of the effectiveness of the test,saying the new test will drain instructional time and increase pressure to "teach to the test" Superintendent O'Neill believes New Jersey schools are already testing too much. In fact,many public educators think New Jersey currently mandates too much standardized testing, and many public educators place little or no value on standardized tests as ways of measuring student progress.And they're almost clever. Rather than advocate for the students; "We need a longer school day and a longer school year, and we need fewer social engineering programs and more hours devoted to teaching core - curriculum subjects," They have taken the opposite approach; They stridently criticize the value of standardized tests and they lament the time the tests consume. And every year more and more and more social engineering programs are added,even as the amount of instructional time is reduced further and further.The come early and stay late crowd will NOT put even some of that time into their contracted hours.What's really amazing is the "We only have enough time to teach to the test" statement. Not only will they not add more hours to the schedule,but "teaching to the test" is not very effective either. Just look at the test scores.