BY LAUREN MATTHEW
Staff Writer
A school planning committee is looking at ways to help elementary school students affected by a redistricting plan make a smooth transition to their new schools next fall.
Also at their Feb. 9 meeting, members of the Old Bridge Board of Education’s Strategic Planning Committee discussed the proposed changes for middle school district lines.
Ideas to smooth the transition for students who will be reassigned included a pen pal program, tours of schools for students and their parents, and invitations from school PTA groups to new parents in order to welcome them.
Elementary school principals met Friday to discuss these programs, which will be implemented beginning in April, according to Strategic Planning Board Committee Chairman John Allen.
The redistricting will move 350 students to new elementary schools in September, a plan that is designed to better align school boundaries and ease overcrowding in some schools. The redistricting plan was approved by the Board of Education in January after several months of discussions before the strategic planning committee. Many parents attended redistricting meetings to voice objections and concerns about their children being moved.
Educational consultant Ross Haber, who redrew district lines for the elementary schools, also will work on the middle school lines. A draft proposal was presented last Wednesday, according to Superintendent of Schools Nicole Okun.
“Whatever will be recommended to the board will not be implemented until September 2006,” Okun said of the middle school changes.
Allen expects the redistricting process to be easier with the middle schools, although, he said, the school district is already going through a lot with the elementary school changes, the anticipated merging of the township’s two high school campuses and the district-wide school construction projects.
“[Redistricting] is an incredible undertaking,” Allen said.
Old Bridge has two middle schools, Salk and Sandburg. However, as a result of the construction project approved in a 2001 referendum, Sandburg will become part of Old Bridge High School. The current Sandburg facility and the adjacent east campus high school building will then serve as the sole high school campus for the township.
The high school’s west campus will then be used as a middle school, with construction expected to be completed by next fall. The school board plans to reduce the number of students who attend Salk by sending them to the converted west campus facility.
The middle school districting changes will be implemented in a three-year phase-in of students, Okun said.
Since the middle schools are not overcrowded, as was the case with elementary schools in the district, an immediate redistricting is not needed, Allen said.
The draft proposal would have split three elementary schools, Okun said, and parents requested that other options be offered. School officials are seeking to avoid a situation in which students from the same elementary school have to attend different middle schools.
“[The consensus has been] we should at least try not to split those schools,” Allen said.
At the committee’s next meeting, Haber will present different options, Okun said.
Haber has been asked to prepare a plan where no schools are split.
“We have asked him to present additional scenarios,” Okun said.
“We have the gift of time,” she said. “We can look at the best options.”
Okun said middle school students who begin at one school will finish at the same school. The board, she said, is looking at the best interests of the children in the district.
The Strategic Planning Board Committee will meet again March 9 at 7:30 p.m. at Carl Sandburg Middle School.