The Shamong Township Board of Education held its regular and reorganization meeting on Tuesday, April 24 at Indian Mills Memorial School. All appointments for the 2012–13 school year were approved at the meeting, said Dolores M. Szymanski, interim superintendent of schools.
Three part-time kindergarten teacher positions and one basic-skills teacher position at Indian Mills School were eliminated in order to rehire the positions as full-time due to the approval of full-day kindergarten in March, she said.
“At this point, we have a part-time basic-skills teacher who only deals with English language arts literacy,” she said.
The district also needs a basic skills mathematics teacher.
As the district readies itself to make the transition to full-day kindergarten, the elementary school is striving to meet the state’s “rigorous” Common Core Standards, she said.
“We are working on the social studies curriculum,” Szymanski said. “You have to keep things in line with standards.”
The district sees the introduction of full-day instruction as the “ability to move forward,” she said.
Currently, parents have had the option to place their children in the Kinder Club program, a private program or partial-day kindergarten.
“We’re meeting an identified need,” she said. “We’re joining 70 percent of the school districts in New Jersey as full-day kindergarten.”
The Seeds for Success program also meets a need in the district. This year, it will be held from July 9 to Aug. 9.
“This is for students who have identified basic skills needs,” she said. “We have found in the past that the vast majority of the families of children who have been identified with needs take advantage of the program.”
In other business:
Approval for renovations in the schools was granted and work will begin soon, Szymanski said. The money comes from a previous referendum.
The renovations to occur and accompanying costs as outlined in the meeting agenda are as follows at Indian Mills School:
Replace cafeteria floor: $16,822; replace carpet with VCT in four classrooms: $20,932; remove slop sink: $3,634; replace roof shingles: $14,500; additional roof work: $6,787; install six doors: $6,700; partition and doors: $9,300; tile in five classrooms: 29,500; doors and hardware: $9,894.
The total cost is $118,069.
At Indian Mills Memorial School, two doors will be installed at a cost of $7,284.
As the school year comes to a close, district officials are radiating with delight over a group of students at the elementary school participating in a joint project with NASA.
They are only one of six teams nationwide, she said.
According to a statement released by the district on Tuesday, April 17, “Teachers Steve Shultz, Dan Giordano, Brian Davis, Linda Newman and Jen Wilson are using their wide and varied talents to conduct an experiment on fluid dynamics at various heights and G-force levels. The goal is to better understand the relationship between fluids and gravity, according to Torricelli’s Law.
“This law states the height of a flowing fluid is directly proportional to the velocity at which the fluid will flow. This is something you cannot do in your backyard or even a fully functional laboratory because there is no way to realistically replicate a condition of zero and partial gravity.
The only logical option is to exploit the tools available at NASA and get into a zero gravity environment to conduct the experiments. But, how do you make that happen? Up stepped the Shamong Education Foundation, providing $17,000 in funding and establishing a relationship with NASA that made the difference and allowing the dreams of five teachers to become reality.”
The team will travel to Houston in mid-July to conduct their experiment, but the process will continue through September.
“That’s one of our points of pride,” Szymanski said.
