Metuchen district reports steady gains on five-year goals; mental health, full-day kindergarten noted

Metuchen Board of Education Superintendent Dr. Anthony Caputo presented the district—s final 2024-25 goals update at the board—s June 24 public meeting, reporting self-assessed progress across five focus areas and outlining next steps for curriculum, mental health, and school climate work.

Caputo said the district—s yearlong motto, “better every day,” reflected incremental improvements and assigned numeric self-scores on a 1-to-5 scale for each focus area. "Our mean score on that 1 to 5 scale for focus area 1 was a 3.92," he said, summarizing work to implement rigorous curriculum and aligned assessments. Caputo reported mean scores of 3.92 for curriculum and instruction; 4.31 for positive learning environment and engagement; 4.00 for analysis of indicators and accountability; 3.65 for teacher support and distributed leadership; and 3.85 for student mental health and wellness.

The presentation tied those focus areas to the ASCD whole-child tenets and reported weighted tenant scores: healthy 3.85, safe 4.18, engaged 3.92, supported 4.09, challenged 3.92 and sustainable 3.83. Caputo noted district data sources included the New Jersey School Climate Improvement Survey and other locally collected measures.

Caputo described school-level examples of progress: Moss Elementary—s integrated ELA work on climate and ecosystems; Campbell—s K-5 ELA leadership and parent webinars; Edgar School—s emphasis on STEM projects and math; and Metuchen High School—s expansion of 21st-century courses tied to business and digital media. He said full-day kindergarten will begin in September and that work to adopt curriculum and train teachers continued over the summer.

On school climate, Caputo reported response counts to the New Jersey survey of 486 third- through fifth-grade students, “over 1,000” secondary students (grades 6-12), 202 staff responses and 384 parent responses. He told the board that each school has a data team and that principals and parent advisory groups will dig into results where areas such as family support and engagement lagged.

On mental health, Caputo and staff described implementation of the Lifeline Trilogy suicide-prevention program. "Seventy-six sixth graders participated in Lifeline Trilogy lessons this year at Edgar," Caputo said, and he confirmed the program will be provided for all students in grades 6, 9 and 11 going forward. He added that parent representation has been added to the district mental-health leadership team and that staff professional development for multidisciplinary teams has continued.

Caputo said the district plans to pilot a new Rutgers collaboration survey next year and that some standard measures were unavailable this year because the Rutgers instrument was under revision. He said AP teacher capacity at the high school was increased through weeklong training for additional teachers.

Board members asked for school-level breakdowns of specific survey domains; Caputo said school data teams, parent advisory groups and supervisors would review results and report back. There was no board vote on the presentation; the update was given as information and followed by questions and committee reports.