JERRY WOLKOWITZ Third-graders (l-r) Emily Finemore, 8; Gerson Gonzalez, 9; Rendie Banks, 8; Andrea Mathis, 9; and Jake Aumack, 8, from the Vetter School, Eatontown, along with their teachers (l-r), Erica Huhn, Karen Faas and Betty Pappaylion, look at the weather in Eatontown on a Web site. A weather station will be set up at the school in the near future, and the school’s third-graders will be the primary users of it.
EATONTOWN — It was the luck of the draw, appropriately enough in Atlantic City, that is giving the Margaret L. Vetter School a weather station.
The draw was in a raffle at the state school boards convention in which Joseph Gaetano, a member of the borough Board of Education, won one of two $2,500 grants awarded attendees for a school project of their choice.
Gaetano sounded out Antoni Mrozinski, principal of the Vetter School, as to his needs and found a weather station high on his wish list.
"This is one thing we’ve always had an interest in, but it’s an expensive item," Mrozinski said, so the school would forego it each year at budget time in deference to more basic needs. "This is nice because it’s a gift."
At the Board of Education meeting Monday night, John Ciardullo, head of John Ciardullo Associates, an architectural firm in Hackensack, presented an oversized blowup of the check Gaetano is getting to buy the weather station.
Ciardullo donated the $5,000 to the school boards convention for the grants.
Gaetano thanked him for the opportunity to get the weather station.
Mrozinski said the weather station will be put outside in front of the Vetter School with a connection running inside to a computer in the library, which will be used by the students to get the readings for temperature, humidity, rainfall, barometric pressure and windchill.
He said all grades will use it, but the target grade will be third grade because it does the most with weather. The upper grades in the K-6 school will use the information from the weather station to make graphs, he added.
"But all the students will use and benefit from it," he said.
Asked before the meeting when the weather station would arrive, Mrozinski said, "If I could get it here Tuesday morning, I would," but he couldn’t.
"We have a lot of teachers interested in it," the principal said. "We’re going to have some fun."