Schools Admin: Rosetta Stone Contract Will Be Signed

School district officials at a meeting Thursday said the district’s decision to implement a computer-based language program in the elementary schools for the upcoming school year will not be altered.

About 30 people attended the meeting, which was part sales pitch and part frank discussion. It followed Tuesday’s Board of Education presentation by outgoing Curriculum Director Marianne Gaffney, where a parade of parents criticized the plan to implement the Rosetta Stone computer-based language program to teach World Language to grades 1-5.

Gaffney, who is leaving the district to take a position in the Cherry Hill school district, began the meeting giving basically the same presentation she did Tuesday, with minor changes. She was followed by a representative from Rosetta Stone, who gave a 15-minute talk espousing the benefits of the program, using examples from the actual program.

Audience questions, submitted on index cards to Assistant Superintendent Sandra Brower, followed for the remainder of the two-hour meeting, with largely civil discussion interrupted with occasionally testy, heated debate.

Brower, fielding questions about the legitimacy of using the computer-based program instead of hiring teachers, said she agreed with some parent concerns that the program was second best to hiring teachers, but that the district had decided to allocate its resources elsewhere.

“Our resources are dwindling in time and in money and we need to make some prioritized decisions,’’ Brower said. “The priorities look something like this: Reading, writing, math, technology, social studies, science, physical education/health, music, art, world language. I’m sorry. But that is the fact.”

The goal of the elementary World Language program, Brower said, had always been to expose pupils to world language and culture, not fluency in a particular language. Rosetta Stone, she said, accomplishes that goal for less money.

She also said that although the contract with Rosetta Stone had not yet been signed, it would be, and that the district was moving ahead to implement it for the upcoming year.

“We are signing the contract with Rosetta Stone,’’ Brower said. “Money could fall from the sky and I don’t know, right now, that this decision is going to be changed.’’

Brower said would go to property tax relief either this year or next, not back into instruction.

Gaffney, who described how the district’s World Language program had been decimated by budget cuts in recent years, praised the Rosetta Stone program as meeting all state educational standards and as a cost effective solution for a comprehensive World Language program, saving the district about $156,000.

The district wants to purchase 1848 licenses for the program, one for every student and faculty member, at a cost of $36,200. With an additional purchase of headphones for the program adding about $30,000 and a single World Language teacher to oversee the program at about $70,000, the entire cost would come to about $136,200, Gaffney said.

In contrast, the cost for four World Language teachers – the number the district had prior to budget cuts – would be about $280,000, plus another $12,000 for supplies, the cost for the alternative is about $292,000. That cost, Gaffney said, would increase over time as teacher salary and benefits increased.

Gaffney said 60 districts in New Jersey are using the program and 10 have abandoned it. Of districts she contacted, three years was the longest that any district had been using the program. She was not more specific.

Gaffney said there would be daily monitoring of the program, along with monthly administrative reviews and two reviews with the public during the school year.

The program would not count, however, as a language grade on pupil report cards, she said. Rosetta Stone would send a monthly progress report home to parents, she said.