Failure to provide info is a disservice to town

The people in the trenches of the Lakewood School District - the teachers and the students - are bearing the brunt of a central administration and Board of Education that seem to have adopted a bunker mentality.

Lakewood is a school district that appears to be coming apart at the seams.

This week the Ocean County/Lakewood branch of the NAACP called upon the state Department of Education to take over the operation of the school district's special education program. In recent months a report from the DOE concluded that students who need special education services are being discriminated against by race.

The school board doesn't see it that way and vows to fight the state. That's more money spent on an attorney, more effort and energy spent fighting, more bad publicity for a district that can't seem to get out of its own way.

Even something that would appear to be so simple - an assignment for a Tri-Town News reporter to write a back-to-school story - turns out to be an impossible mission where Lake-wood is concerned.

In an age of instant communication and worldwide connections, contact could not be established with the assistant superintendent who was supposed to have the information the newspaper needed.

End result? No back-to-school story for Lakewood. A blown opportunity for district administrators to talk about what they are doing for children.

In recent weeks the Tri-Town News also attempted to contact Lakewood school officials in order to have a substantive discussion of issues regarding the district's failure to meet all the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Quotes attributed to Superintendent of Schools Edward Luick in other area newspapers generally consist of nothing more than Luick, the district's top administrator, saying that he is looking into whatever issue is being discussed.

One call that was placed to Luick's office by our reporter resulted in the person who answered the phone saying that the superintendent was not in and that he probably would not discuss the No Child Left Behind matter anyway.

In essence, that is the superintendent telling the public he does not need to explain why students are failing in some Lakewood schools, or what administrators are planning to do to correct the problems.

Residents should find Luick's history of lame comments or no comment unacceptable and demand more from the man who is in charge of the district.

The Tri-Town News has written about the accomplishments of Lakewood public school students in the past, and would like to continue doing so, but the ongoing lack of cooperation from district administrators makes our job of telling these stories to the community almost impossible, and that is a damn shame.