ESSEX - Local Talk area school students, depending on the public district, are to be greeted with new school buildings, programs and/or keep personnel when they report Sept. 2-9. They may also find fewer teachers, support staff or courses as a result of how their individual boards of education have coped with state education aid cuts.
The Newark Public Schools district, as the state's largest district, is to celebrate the opening of the new Speedway School at 705 South Orange Ave. Sept. 2. The four-story school, which sits atop the old Vailsburg Velodrome/Meadow Brook Garden boxing ring, replaces the World War I-era Speedway Avenue School some five blocks southeast.
NPS, New Jersey School Development Authority, city and Essex County officials hope to have most of Speedway School's traffic safety, parking and playground issues met by opening day. Those improvements include signage and barriers approaching the school from Maybaum Street and South Munn Avenue plus a temporary playground on the faculty parking lot and, in turn, an interim lot from the adjacent Newark Housing Authority's Bradley Court property.
Another 10 schools, ranging from elementary to high schools, have been revamped to meet federal No Child Left behind guidelines. They include Malcolm X. Shabazz High School becoming three subject-oriented academies and a global curriculum academy at the Avon Avenue School.
While NPS was able to retain Ras Baraka as Central High School's principal for the third year, there is a new principal at Shabazz. Who he or she is - among some 10 other new principals among the 85 Newark schools - was for the latter's student body to find out at the Aug. 25-31 high school orientation sessions. The district has not released a list of the new building heads as of press time.
It's not known whether Sixth grade students of the William H. Brown Academy of the Performing Arts will go to Arts High School for a special program or have the option of a similar curriculum at their present Belmont-Runyon Elementary School home.
District administrators first offered Brown Academy students and parents a new program at Arts High in June. Some parents, however, have asked about staying at Belmont-Runyon and having a similar program there. The Brown Academy building on nearby Bergen Street, which was supposed to reopen Sept. 2, has not had its intended renovation.
The Academy for Vocational Careers building on Montgomery Street also remains vacant for reuse. The district was working on having AVC underclass members placed among the district's 11 other high schools.
Outgoing Superintendent of Schools Clifford B. Janey and the School Advisory Board meanwhile approved Aug. 24 a school floor plan whereby each building will have an arts and music program, among other support services. City educators approved roughly 300 staff resignations and retirements. NPS received $34 million less in state aid, due to Gov. Christopher Christie's springtime budget cuts, from its $787 million 2009-10 million budget.
Orange Public Schools' students and parents may have an old or new look at the district's elementary buildings. Superintendent Ronald Lee and the board have overseen the redistricting of their lower class schools for Pre-Kindergarten through Seventh grades.
The 1920s-era Orange Middle School becomes the career-oriented Orange Preparatory Academy for Seventh through Ninth grades. The 1973-built Orange High School is to welcome Grade 10-12 students.
East Orange students of the Healy Middle School complex will be returning to the three divisional schools Sept. 7. Those three "schools-within-a-school," to meet NCLB regulations, will be characterized by their Sixth, Seventh and Eighth grades rather than by subjects.
West Orange Public Schools welcome Edwin Acevedo as its latest Hazel Elementary School principal. Acevedo is also the districts' first bilingual building head. Some school clubs and sports, due to budgetary constraints, were either scaled back or cut out.
Montclair is about to open its new Charles H. Bullock School on Washington and Elm streets. Its Renaissance Academy is to meanwhile move into the ex-Rand School building.
The Bullock School, which takes up most of a block also fronted by Bloomfield Avenue, was built on the old African-American YMCA and Mother Seton Hospital and Nursing Home buildings. The project was delayed until old cemetery remains, which were supposed to be removed in the 1920s, were reinterred in 2008 at Mt. Hebron Cemetery in Upper Montclair.
Budget cuts, however, dropped all world languages at the elementary schools except for Mandarin Chinese classes.
The neighboring Glen Ridge Public Schools are opening without major changes. Its administrators and school board, however, are in the midst of exploring whether to change to an all-charter school system on economic grounds.
Bloomfield High School's Bengal football team, among other gridiron squads and sports teams, will not be using William Foley Field this fall. Replacing the 1930s Foley grandstand and remediating its playing surface is to be done through most of 2010-11. Interim Superintendent Cathering Mozak said that the soil remediation contract is to be awarded Sept. 7.
Nutley, on one hand, is going to a full-day Kindergarten for the first time. The township schools, on the other, has seen most of 30 retired teachers replaced by mostly new teachers.
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