MISSION STATEMENT
Palisades Park School District believes that its teachers must be dedicated to a continuous plan of professional development that begins with pre-service activities, continues with induction into the profession and extends through the life of their professional career in education through ongoing and sustained professional development. To that end, the Professional Development Committee of Palisades Park School District seeks to provide direction and procedural guidelines for staff development reflecting the standards of N.J.A.C. 6:11-13 and within the mandates of the 100 hour professional development directive as established by the New Jersey Department of Education and State Professional Teaching Standards Board.
The Palisades Park Professional Development Committee has worked to ensure that all planned activities reflect the Eight Key Elements of High Quality Professional Development and the Definition of Professional Development form the Elementary and Secondary Education Act established by NCLB legislation. As a result, the plan focuses on aligning curriculum to address NJCCCS and assisting students with attaining national, state and local goals. Standardized test results, classroom grades, portfolios, and ESL testing scores are used to plan activities. Training is focus on differentiated instruction and brain based learning to full engage all students. Meanwhile, teachers attend grade level and subject based conferences and training to better revise subject area curricula to improve lesson plans.
The Palisades Park Professional Development Plan is based on board approved five year improvement plan and in service days are built into the district calendar. Funds are set aside to compensate teachers for hours outside of regular contract. Some training is vendor sponsored to train teachers on curriculum materials. All sessions are evaluated through surveys that are distributed, collected, and reviewed after each session. The plan is aligned to the Palisades Park School Improvement Plan, the curriculum guides for each subject, the NJCCCS, the NCLB standards and the Professional Teaching Standards.