The Flemington-Raritan Regional School District was designated a “high performing” district under the New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum after the state scored its Instruction and Program component at 81%. Superintendent Doctor McGahn told the board the updated score was the result of a monitoring review that followed the district’s improvement plan.

The designation matters because, the superintendent said, high-performing districts “are granted greater autonomy and they have fewer state interventions.” McGahn added that the status communicates to families and staff that “they can trust the work that the district is doing.”

NJQSAC is the state’s monitoring and evaluative rubric for districts. McGahn explained it assesses five areas: Instruction and Program; fiscal management; governance; operations; and personnel. He said the district’s other components scored “very high,” and he cited fiscal management at about 94% and governance similarly high. The Instruction and Program score had been below 80% in the district’s last review, driven primarily by student assessment performance, McGahn said. The district adopted an improvement plan last fall to address the shortfall.

Board members asked how the QSAC designation related to an earlier state remark that the district was “underperforming” in funding adequacy. McGahn and other officials responded that QSAC’s fiscal-management metric measures compliance and internal controls—whether the business office follows procedures and maintains documentation—not the adequacy or amount of state funding. “It’s not apples to apples,” one board member said during the discussion.

The district will appear less frequently for state monitoring in areas covered by QSAC while it retains the high-performing status, McGahn said. He also asked for any board questions about the scores or the improvement plan, and the board moved on to other agenda items.