Woodbridge Schools Go All Remote After Teacher Shortage

WOODBRIDGE, NJ — Add another one to the list. The Woodbridge public school district — the eighth largest school district in the state — has decided to begin the school year all remote.

This is a change from how the district initially planned to start the school year, which was this hybrid plan of half the week in school, half the week at home.

Woodbridge schools superintendent Dr. Robert Zega said the district changed course in the past three weeks, after he saw an "uptick" in the number of students requesting to stay at home and the number of teachers requesting to go on paid leave.

"We thought we had a really good plan," said Zega. "When we put our plan out about three weeks ago, a hybrid plan, since that plan went out several things happened: First, many of our students began switching from the in-person option to the full remote option. In some schools, it was as high as 15 percent switched from in-school to fully remote."

"The other trend is that many of our staff members expressed concerns about returning to school safely," said Zega. "We saw an uptick in the leave requests. So as the staffing changed, we found it more and more unmanageable to have the small class sizes, eight to twelve students in a class."

"It was mainly a staffing concern that has caused us to reconsider," he said. "This was a very difficult decision and very stressful."

Woodbridge schools will now be fully remote until at least the end of September. At that point, the district will re-evaluate and currently, their pending target date for return is Oct. 12.

Other New Jersey school districts have cited a teacher shortage as the reason why they have changed to be fully remote: Long Branch schools superintendent Michael Salvatore said Monday he received requests from nearly 275 teachers, asking for either accommodations or paid leave this fall. And so the district was "forced to pivot," he said.

The Woodbridge Board of Education voted to approve the decision at their Thursday night meeting, and Zega spoke about it in a YouTube video he released on his Twitter account Friday morning.

"We're about a week and a half away from the beginning of the school year. Last night at the Board of Education meeting, the board approved the superintendent's recommendation to begin the school year fully remote," said Zega. "This means there will be no in-person instruction; it will be 100 percent fully remote for all students."

The first day of Woodbridge schools will be Sept. 3; it was supposed to be Sept. 2. Zega also promised that the virtual learning will be "much different" than it was in the spring, but did not elaborate.

Watch Zega's announcement on Friday morning:

As of Friday, Aug. 21, the following New Jersey school districts have chosen to begin the 2020-2021 school year with all remote learning::

• Asbury Park
• Atlantic City
• Bayonne
• Bridgeton
• Camden
• Dover
• Edison
• Elizabeth
• Fair Lawn
• Flemington-Raritan
• Freehold Borough
• Freehold Township
• Garfield
• Guttenberg
• Hackensack
• Hamilton Township (Mercer)
• Harrison
• Hillsborough
• Hillside
• Hudson County Schools of Technology
• Jersey City
• Kearny
• Lacey Township
• Linden
• Long Branch
• Manalapan-Englishtown
• Montclair
• Neptune Township
• New Brunswick
• Newark
• North Bergen
• North Brunswick
• Nutley
• Old Bridge
• Paterson
• Passaic
• Perth Amboy
• Piscataway
• Plainfield
• Princeton
• Rahway
• Roselle
• Roselle Park
• Scotch Plains-Fanwood
• South Brunswick
• South Orange-Maplewood
• Springfield (Union)
• Teaneck
• Toms River
• Union City
• West New York
• West Orange
• Willingboro

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