New classroom space open in Upper Freehold Regional schools
District may push back project’s completion due to weather delays

By Jane meggitt &

Alison granito

Staff Writers

According to Upper Freehold Regional Schools Superintendent Robert Connelly, "the worst is over."

"Last year [the district] had to deal with a lot of construction but didn’t see the fruits of the project," Connelly said Tuesday.

This year students and faculty will see more classroom space as renovated rooms open for use, and will enjoy a new track and bleachers.

However, Connelly said Tuesday that the weather-related delays over the summer may set back the construction calendar.

According to Connelly, the elementary/middle school annex, which will house fifth- and sixth-grade classes, was ready for students this week. However, the fate of several new classrooms at Allentown High School was undecided on Tuesday.

"We do have all the space we need to open," Connelly said.

Of the five new classrooms that officials hoped to have online when AHS opened its doors, Connelly had hopes that three would be ready for the school’s opening day Wednesday.

"Code and fire officials from the township are looking at those three rooms as we speak," Connelly said Tuesday.

If the three rooms were deemed free of "minor issues" that code officials documented a few weeks ago, then those rooms would be ready for students on opening day. If work still needs to be done, the superintendent expected the rooms to open in the first two weeks of school.

"There was never a timeline that everything would be open by September," Connelly said.

"What we worked to do was bring as many classrooms online as we could," he said, adding that 120 days of weather delays on the renovation project caused the district to fall short of opening the five classrooms by Wednesday.

"There was a greater push to make sure we had the space we needed ready at the elementary school," Connelly said.

Although the district has hopes that renovations to the schools will be "substantially complete" by December, Connelly said the summer’s inclement weather may cause the district to amend its target dates for wrapping up the project.

He said the Upper Freehold Regional School District Board of Education is scheduled to hear the new timeline on Sept. 17.

Allentown High School

AHS Principal Christopher Nagy said contingency plans have been devised to deal with however many classrooms are available on opening day.

Another area of concern is the increase in the student population.

"We’re at 937 and growing every day," he said. "It’s 120 [students] over last year."

This year, AHS will have several new staff members teaching English, Latin, Spanish and physical education, as well as two new teachers in the social studies de­partment. There is also a new, bilingual so­cial worker who replaced a retiree.

"A number of these new teachers are one, two or three years out of college," said Nagy, "and they have a tremendous amount of energy. Some have indicated that they would like to coach and get in­volved with other activities in the school. The majority of our coaches are outside the school district, so having coaches in the building builds a rapport with students."

He noted two specific goals for AHS this year. One is in regard to information literacy: whether students know their re­search is valid, correct and reliable, and whether the work is theirs or someone else’s. Academic integrity will be stressed, and any infringement will be more heavily penalized than in the past.

The second goal is the expansion of the senior year option wherein students may receive both high school and college cred­its for classes. Last year, three seniors par­ticipated in online distance learning through Drexel University, Philadelphia. This year two students are involved in an online agricultural program offered by Iowa State University.

"These are the types of initiatives we’re looking at doing," said Nagy.

Teachers will have three areas of con­centration for their in-service days. One is differentiated instruction, or delivering class materials to students of varying abili­ties within the same class. The others are diversity and career education.

Nagy said that parents were asked, when registering their children, to list their places of employment. The goal of that move is to develop a database for career education and start a speaker’s bureau of parents willing to come in and talk to stu­dents about their careers.

All teachers will have laptops this year, which Nagy said will enhance classroom teaching and provide an interactive class­room experience.

The theme for AHS this year will be "Attitude and Tolerance." Nagy said there will be a focus on 9/11 and the connection between terrorism and bullying. Nagy called bullying "a type of terrorism on a lesser scale."

On a personal level for students, the dress code will be more strictly enforced.

"I’m not happy with how young people in general are dressing," said Nagy. "The skirts are very short, and students wear midriffs. It’s very distracting in the class­room."

Students who dress inappropriately will be given AHS T-shirts to wear over their skimpy attire, he said.

Elementary/Middle School

According to elementary/middle school Principal Edward Coldren, the annex classrooms, formerly used by AHS, have been given a certificate of occupancy and are ready for use. All of the sixth-grade classes and three- of the fifth-grades, as well as two resource centers, are in this building.

Students will be dropped off by their buses at the annex in the morning, he said. Children will have to go to the main build­ing for lunch, specials and dismissal. But Coldren said, "We developed a schedule to minimize the back and forth from the main building and the annex. We made our schedule around them."

A teaching assistant will be on hand to assist and accompany students.

There are five additional classroom teachers this year to serve the growing stu­dent population. There are two more third grades, and one additional fourth, fifth and sixth grade. The average class size has been lowered from 27 to 22 children, he said.

Grades one through three are beginning a new integrated language arts program, which Coldren said will add "consistency, continuity and a better individual assess­ment program."

Technology has been expanded, and more support staff are on hand to integrate computers into the daily instruction of teachers.

Thirty teachers attended a workshop to initiate a Character Education program, which will be taught in all the first and most of the second grades, as well as some third-grade classes.