BY CLARE MARIE CELANO
Staff Writer
It’s time for children to pack away their swimsuits and to load up their backpacks – school is back in session. Freehold Borough’s three schools will welcome 1,342 children on Sept. 7.
Freehold Borough Superintendent of Schools Elizabeth O’Connell will be starting her first full year in that position. She said seven new teachers will start the school year with the students. These seven teachers have replaced staff members who retired or left the district.
The changes are as follows:
+ Four new teachers will join the staff of the Freehold Intermediate School, Park Avenue – a sixth-grade math teacher, a seventh-grade math teacher, a seventh-grade science teacher and a bilingual education teacher.
+ Park Avenue Elementary School, Park Avenue, will welcome two new teachers – a fifth-grade teacher and a bilingual educator.
+ The Freehold Learning Center elementary school, Dutch Lane Road, will welcome a new fifth-grade teacher.
There are new positions in admin-istration, according to O’Connell. Patricia Rizzo is the new math supervisor in a position funded through a Comprehensive School Reform grant. Janet Morales is the new supervisor of bilingual education in a position funded by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
Thomas Tramaglini has taken over O’Connell’s previous position, director of technology and assessment.
The primary goal for the new school year, according to O’Connell, is improved student achievement. Other goals include professional development, teacher leadership and parental involvement. Also on the “to do” list are implementing recommendations made by a team of representatives from the state Department of Education Collaborative Assessment for Planning for Achievement (CAPA). The new positions held by Morales and Rizzo were CAPA recommendations.
O’Connell said teachers will be using data to drive instruction this year. She explained that teachers will be trained to analyze student test scores on an individual basis. The superintendent said teachers will divide their class into small groups in order to facilitate the students’ learning. Each student will then have a lesson designed to meet his or her own specific needs based on information derived from the test scores.
O’Connell explained that teachers will go over the test scores and determine the areas in which a student needs the most help, as well as where the child’s strengths lie.
“The lessons will be designed around the data we receive from our standardized test scores. We will also be conducting our own in-house assessments in language arts and math,” O’Connell said.
She said Tramaglini and Director of Curriculum Ronnie Dougherty will head up this assessment program, which will be done quarterly. O’Connell said this will allow a tracking system to observe student progress.
This year will also see teachers focusing on differentiality in the classroom.
Bringing the assessment component into the classroom will make this easier and more accurate, according to O’Connell, who said staff members will be designing the differentiality around the data they receive from the test scores and the in-house assessments.
Another initiative is the expansion of the inclusion model at the Park Avenue Elementary School which, according to O’Connell, has been successful in limited use.
She explained that children with special needs who are able to, are placed in a regular classroom and taught with the rest of the class rather than being pulled out of the class to go to a resource room for special instruction.
There are two teachers in every classroom to help facilitate this learning. This has been done in the third, fourth and fifth grades at Park Avenue. O’Connell said it worked so well that administrators will be implementing the inclusion program at the Freehold Intermediate School in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades this fall.
Other recommendations from CAPA are also up and running. School officials are purchasing a full library for each classroom in all three schools. The effort is funded through a state IDEAL grant (Initiative for the Development of Early Achievement in Literacy) and each class will have more than 300 book titles. This grant will also provide funding for a teacher to work as a reading coach in classrooms.
Additionally, this year will see students sitting in for a 90-minute literary block on a daily basis. This is also a CAPA recommendation.
Lessons plans which were formerly prepared by individual teachers for their students have been standardized, as per CAPA request, according to O’Connell. She said administrators and teachers worked together to create a template for these plans.
Another change this year will see the borough’s preschool program for 4-year-olds move from the Freehold Learning Center to rented space at the First Presbyterian Church, West Main Street. There will be two morning classes and two afternoon classes for the 4-year-olds, according to O’Connell.
The superintendent said the classrooms previously used at the Freehold Learning Center for the 4-year-olds will still be in use. One will be used for students with special handicaps, a second room will be used for pupils with autism and a third room will be used as a self-contained special education classroom.
Children at the Freehold Learning Center will once again be able to take art classes in the art room. It had previously been necessary to use the art room for the instruction of pupils with special needs.