The school district has passed the New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum (NJQSAC) for the second straight year, it was announced at the Deptford board of education meeting last week.
The NJQSAC is the New Jersey Department of Education’s (NJDOE) monitoring and district self-evaluation system for public school districts in the state, according to nj.gov. When a district gets evaluated, Superintendent Kevin Kanauss refers to it as getting “QSACed”.
Kanauss presented the results for 2022-’23 through a letter the board had received from the county.
The district evaluated itself first, followed by a study conducted by a member of the Gloucester County Executive Superintendence, Ave Altersitz, on April 26. Results had to be shared with both the board and the public.
Five categories are graded by the state: instruction and program, fiscal, governance, operations and personnel. In order to pass, according to Kanauss, a district needs at least an 80% across all categories.
“Based on our results for the QSAC review that was graded last school year, we received our results on Sept. 28, 2023,” he said. “For all the five major areas of evaluation, we need an 80% to pass. And I’m happy to say that our district has passed QSAC for the second consecutive time.
“We scored 80% percent or higher in all major categories,” Kanauss added, “which makes this a high-performing school district.”
Kanauss also described the approach the district takes when it comes to evaluating the district for the NJQSAC.
“They usually take a portfolio approach,” said Kanauss. “What happens is I take all of the documentation from all the different departments and I upload them into a Google document.
“We used this three years ago, when we were last QSAced and it actually became the model for the county. A lot of the county schools follow the same methods that we do because we started it.”
Preparation for the evaluation began in the beginning of February and became complicated due to the 2022-23 school year being one of the first school years coming off of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Their plan of action had to go through approval for several groups before eventually being approved by the state themselves.
The next Deptford BOE meeting is scheduled for Tuesday Oct. 17 at 6:30 p.m. at the Deptford BOE Building.
