By Sophia Wiener
Clarification: The story mentioned a vacancy in the Spanish teacher position at Shrewsbury Borough School. Ms. Yolanda Roeder rejoined the staff and the district Sept. 22 after being approved at the September Board of Education meeting. She has resumed her instructional role and is now responsible for delivering Spanish instruction to every student at SBS.
SHREWSBURY – Many parents turned out to a recent board of education meeting to express concerns about the rate of teacher resignations in the district.
According to previously published reports from a June meeting, three teachers resigned and a fourth, the winner of the district’s Service Professional of the Year award, said she was being let go because her position was being cut.
While a number of teachers also attended the Aug. 20 meeting, they did not speak about the issue, deferring to the parents to give feedback to the school board. Teacher association co-president Emily Cuervo declined to comment after the meeting to The Two River Times on the issue.
At the meeting, parents spoke about the difficulty in replacing the school’s Spanish language teacher, a vacancy announced at the meeting’s outset. The district will use virtual instruction until it can fill the vacancy, the board said. A number of parents weren’t happy to hear that, not so fondly remembering previous experiences with virtual instruction during the COVID-19 lockdown.
“Remote learning? We’ve been there, done that. We’re so far beyond that,” said one parent during public comments.
“While I’m aware how hard it is to find teachers,” that same parent said, they wondered why the Spanish language teaching position wasn’t already posted on the school’s website.
While Eileen McCaffery, another parent, had many criticisms, she stressed her concern that the teachers already in the school “were not being protected” by the district if they spoke against the board or school leadership on certain issues. She said that atmosphere caused the teachers to resign.
A mother and teacher, Christina DeMartino, said she is interested in changing the culture of the school. She referenced her current work with the school to develop its character education and social-emotional learning curriculum. She called for concrete goals like picking a value each month, dedicating time to teach about it and recognizing students who model that value.
All speakers received applause from the crowd of roughly 40 parents.
The Shrewsbury Board of Education, however, doesn’t view its rate of resignations as either an outlier or an issue. “Since the 2020-2021 school year, SBS has had 21 teachers resign, which is in line with statewide averages,” board president Jessica Groom said in a statement outside the meeting. The school employed 51 teachers during that time period. Over the past five years, that means about 8% of the teachers have resigned each year, in line with the state average of 9-11% resignation rates from 2014 to 2021, according to the 2024 “New Jersey’s Teacher Workforce Landscape” report by Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
“It’s important to note that the type of staffing changes that exist across all industries are common in education,” Groom added.
After the meeting, Shrewsbury Borough School Superintendent Brent MacConnell provided more context to the statewide teacher shortage, which has exacerbated hiring problems. “I think we have a lot of challenges just locally, but I think, in New Jersey, colleges and universities are shutting some of their preparation programs and public service is maybe less appealing to folks, and now it’s become more complicated to be working in schools – as you know, in my role as superintendent, or certainly for our teachers. I think the environment, the landscape, is very different.”
At the meeting, McCaffery and another speaker called for MacConnell’s resignation in light of their concerns about teacher turnover. MacConnell did not respond to those comments.
The board said these issues have been “previously addressed and resolved.”
“The Board of Education thoroughly investigates all personnel matters. We are bound by confidentiality in these matters – that is the law, not an excuse. The superintendent has conducted himself with accountability. The board responsibly handles any complaints and allegations, acting with the trust put in us as elected representatives.”
In Other News
The board opened the Aug. 20 meeting with an announcement by board member David Ngo regarding a report that the proposed 2026 renewal of the State Employees Health Benefits Program currently projects rates to increase by 29% for medical coverage and 59% for prescription coverage.
For the new school year, the district also unveiled its $22.5 million expansion approved by taxpayers in a referendum and funded through bonds issued by the Monmouth County Improvement Authority. The school has completed a new pre-K wing, marking the latest chapter in the century-long evolution of the borough’s only elementary school from a three-story schoolhouse to a modern educational facility. The project added three pre-K classrooms and two multipurpose rooms to the existing campus. Students will eat lunch in the all-purpose room and use the original gym for physical education and assemblies. A separate multipurpose room will accommodate the district’s aftercare program, run by the YMCA, as well as clubs and community meetings.
The article originally appeared in the September 11 – September 17, 2025 print edition of The Two River Times.
