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SOUTH BRUNSWICK; District presents ‘Educational Summit’

By Ed Birch, Special Writer
   Administrators from the South Brunswick School District presented their eighth annual Educational Summit at Monday’s Board of Education meeting.
   ”This presentation by the entire school district is a reflection on all of our efforts to present a quality educational system to the residents of South Brunswick,” Superintendent Gary McCartney said.
   Dr. McCartney pointed out that the “Summit” was the eighth annual for the district.
   The first administrator to present a report was Human Resources Director Richard Chromey. Mr. Chromey talked about how the district was able to save $2.2 million by switching health insurance providers to a Horizon-employees Cross insured plan, which effected 14 percent of the employees.
   He also reported on how the district dealt with a staffing project last year where nine high level administrator and supervisor positions experienced manpower changes. The district made a decision to do as many of the changes by using the talents of existing staff and only recruited a limited number of new employees to backfill the vacancies, he said.
   Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction, Joanne Kerekes, reported on Supervision and Evaluation, and Technology.
   She reported that curriculum manuals are proceeding ahead of schedule, and that many of the subject areas are also available to the community to review.
   The district has established “clear grade level benchmarks” for the teachers to follow according to Ms. Kerekes.
   Ms. Kerekes also said that supervision and evaluation are managed as part of a four tiered system to provide adequate evaluation of progress, which is supervised by a community developed advisory committee.
   In the area of technology, Mrs. Kerekes talked about how the future could lead to school matters being stored on “the cloud” and in the near future, students “may be bringing their own technology devices to school with them.”
   ”These types of new technology will require much study before such items are implemented in our district” said Ms. Kerekes.
   Suzanne Luck-Born, the District Director of Assessment, told the audience that “23 states have created assessments” to measure educational performance in the schools. The next chapter in the assessment standard will be a State Data Warehouse and a Partnership for Readiness for College and Career (PARCC) to be established.
   Jennifer Denzler, the newly appointed Director of Professional Development, reported on how each new teacher receives a minimum of 16 hours of training and mentoring by in-house supervisors in the district. Included in this training is teaching enrichment procedures and mandated policy reviews.
   Sandra Burghgraef-Fehte gave an in depth report on the District Community Education Program. Staff are hired and trained by district educational employees, and the district program provides a diverse and interesting selection of programs, for a fee-based enrollment, to area residents, she said.
   The program participates in cost and energy savings programs and uses district established security protocols, she said. She also said it is the goal of the program to increase elementary level enrichment programs and offer an increased number of parent/child classes.
   Raphael Morales, the District Director of Student Services, reported on the support services that are available, student health and wellness, and school safety.
   The district will be planning to put more emphasis on special services to be offered to children from preschool to age 21, according to Mr. Morales.
   He said the district will be making an effort to study the services that are delivered to minority students, a problem that has been identified by oversight agencies in their program review.
   The district will continue employing Nurse Educators as part of the program, he said.
   These staff members present a harder effort to find recruits for the positions, but the reward of the ability to teach health education is defiantly worth the extra efforts that the district must put into this initiative, he said.
   He said the district will continue their program of security drills at all locations. These drills are both announced and unannounced and have been monitored in cooperation with the South Brunswick Police Department. In addition, the local police department has made security studies of all locations, and recommendations are currently under study by the administration.
   The Buildings and Grounds and Budget areas were delegated to School Business Administrator/Board Secretary Anthony Tonzini.
   Within last year, Mr. Tonzini reported that the district had saved approximately $250,000 in energy by eliminating the use of district buildings during summer months, and using the recommendations of a recently hired Energy Consultant.
   At the same time, he said progress has been achieved in the security area with the installation of cameras, door lock systems at all locations, and improved traffic flow designs at the middle schools and high school for student drop-off and pick ups.
   The district saw a $4.3 million savings due to the refinancing of existing bonds, and examining new opportunities on short-term bonds about to expire.
   In addition, Mr. Tonzini reported that for the third consecutive year, the school budget reflected no overall tax levy increase to taxpayers.
   The next initiative will be the exploration of advertising to generate funds that will offset additional tax levy needs.