The Investors Savings Bank Foundation, which provides funding to nonprofit organizations that enhance the communities the bank serves, has awarded $24,000 to the Scholarship Fund for Inner-city Children. 

The Scholarship Fund provides partial tuition scholarships to economically disadvantaged children attending private and parochial schools in Bergen, Essex, Hudson, and Union counties.  Since its founding in 1983, the fund has distributed more than $30 million in partial scholarships to more than 40,000 students.  Scholarships are based on financial need and are awarded without regard to race, religion or ethnic background.  The Foundation grant will be used to fund four-year partial scholarships, at $2,000 a year, for four incoming freshmen who will begin attending high school in the Archdiocese in September.

En mi último artículo, se le explico el proceso del niño cuando entra pre-escolar.  Como le mencione anteriormente, esta experiencia puede ser un poco asustase. Algunos niños ya han tenido la experiencia de estar en pre-escolar.  Muchos cubos en el jardín infantil no son en el mismo local donde el niño fue para su experiencia pre-escolar. Esta experiencia nueva  hay que planearse con mucho cuidado. Para algunos niños, es como empezar de nuevo. Quizás van estar en un edificio nuevo con maestros y niños nuevos.

Para esos padres que no han matriculado sus niños, es un poco tarde.  Muchos padres han matriculado sus niños en Mayo. Las escuelas proveen esta información temprano en Mayo porque no hay muchos cubos. Padres han esperado más de 24 horas para matricular su niño como en la escuela de Ann St. en Newark.

My last article focused on preparing your child for preschool. That can be a scary experience if all the tools are not in place for this journey. Some children have already experienced preschool and are now ready to enter kindergarten. Many kindergarten placements are not in the same location as their preschool settings. That is why this experience has to be planned carefully. For some children, it will be like starting again. They may be in a new building with new teachers and a new group of students.

For those parents that have not registered their children for kindergarten, it is somewhat late. Many parents registered their children for kindergarten in May. Schools put out this information early because in many schools, there are only a few slots. Parents waited over night in some schools to make sure they were able to register their child. Some put out tents the day before (i.e. Ann St. School in Newark).

PRINCETON – Before an audience of hundreds of charter school teachers, administrators, parents and supports, Carlos Lejnieks, chairman of the New Jersey Charter Schools Association (NJSCA) declared this morning that “if there is no struggle, there is no progress” in ensuring the growth of high-quality charter schools in the state.

“Everyone is here today to reverse the trend in public education in America,” said Lejnieks, during the opening session of the final day of the statewide conference. “We are all working hard in the 73 charter schools in New Jersey, and maybe we feel isolated that there are only pockets of these schools around the state. But we must remember, to reach this point, generations of school reformers worked to make this possible. This is a real moment of joy for the charter school community, as we look together to the future.”

Lejnieks said that future will be challenging, with the state approval of 23 more charter schools and 58 more applications pending before the state Department of Education. Just as the first few charter school applications were a defining moment for the educational reform movement in New Jersey, the goal must remain for the state’s charter school community to ensure each new charter school is successful, focused on academic excellence.