HOWELL – Officials of the Howell Township School District have voted to approve a new school model for preschool full universe expansion, which is set to be implemented for the 2024-25 school year.
At the July 10 Community Interaction Committee meeting, a presentation was held by the Early Childhood Advisory Council to show potential concepts and details of two different plans to residents.
“This is an exciting time, but that excitement brings complexity. Being able to offer free, high-quality preschool for our community we believe is an essential part of the work we do as a school district and as a Board of Education,” Superintendent Joseph Isola said.
“We’re still early in the stages. There will be no changes for September 2023 – status quo,” he said. “We’re adding 12 preschool classrooms in our five existing preschool buildings. Everything in the presentation begins 2024.”
In 2022, Governor Phil Murphy and the New Jersey Department of Education (DOE) announced $26 million in funding to districts, which was apportioned in the FY2023 budget. With these grants, nearly 2,150 additional three- and four-year-old children will have access to a preschool classroom across the state. This would increase New Jersey’s preschool seats to nearly 70,000.
Howell was one of 27 districts across the state to receive funding to aid their preschool program in the 2022-2023 school year. They received an amount of $2,286,405 from the state grant.
At the time, Isola said the money will be used for a five-year plan to serve preschoolers in Howell. Its first year began in fall 2022.
Dorothea Fernandez, Director of Pupil Services, discussed how the district was able to accommodate year one and two which had 165 and 321 students, respectively. However, the district expects there to be around 900 students by year 5.
“We have been able to successfully place in our existing structure additional students. What we do know operationally, we cannot sustain in the current structure that we have,” Fernandez said.
“The sooner we get students in front of us, the more successful this will be for everyone,” she added.
The district stated that they hope by September of 2024 to expand to full universes. This means any family that has a 3- or 4-year-old that is eligible to attend preschool will be able to come to the district for the full day program at no cost.
The ECAC committee reviewed different scenarios and evaluated their educational and operational factors.
“There was a strong need that pushed us to having early childhood learning centers. Some of the momentum from the conversations kept pushing us to this determination. Some were that in early childhood learning centers we can ensure developmentally appropriate practices that are geared towards our youngest learners,” preschool teacher Danielle Moore said. “Also, (there would be) increased opportunities for inclusion of children with Individualized Education Plans going into the general classroom. They would also be a greater access to specialist and consultants.”
After reviewing each scenario, the committee believed models 2-4-2 and 2-8-2 would be possible to achieve knowing the district would need potentially 60 classrooms for the full universe.
The 2-4-2 Model would offer two buildings of early learning centers. There would be four sister-pair schools for grades K-5, and then two middle schools.
The 2-8-2 Model would offer two early learning centers, eight K-5 schools, and two middle schools. Both models would have a total of about 400 students per grouped grade section.
Isola added that these models were chosen as potential concepts after reviewing school boundary lines and how populated Howell is in each section.
During the presentation, the benefits and challenges of each model were listed along with a response.
For the 2-4-2 Model, some benefits are: more teachers on the same grade level within each building, staffing for before/aftercare, targeted attention to unique needs of each grade band, and better able to address developmental needs of students in the grade band. Some challenges are potential for siblings to be in four different schools/times, decrease in parent involvement, and inability for each grade level to have common planning periods.
Benefits of the 2-8-2 Model included longevity of student/teacher relationships, deeper understanding of educational continuum, full time guidance/special area teachers/less itinerants, and fewer sections at each grade level leads to greater collaboration. Challenges consist of fewer general education classes for inclusion of special programs, change back to k-5 creates transition to all 10 k-5, overcrowding/sustainability, and adequate staffing for itinerants.
“The social, emotional, and the well-being and mental health of all of the students was really at the forefront of those discussions,” said Lee Dugar, School Social Worker, CPIS/ECAC Chair.
Other topics discussed possible transportation tiers, an overview of the six-hour day, and the benefits of preschool and the economic benefit to the community.
During the public comment portion of the meeting, one person asked how S-2 cuts would affect preschool and the grant received. S-2 is the name of a bill that reduced state funding for many schools over a seven-year period. Isola said although they are losing state funding due to S-2, the preschool grant is outside of the state aid. He added that the grant is additional funding and that preschools should continue to be funded 100% even after the final year of S-2.
At the July 19 Board of Education meeting, a motion was made by member Ira Thor and seconded by member MaryRose Malley to adopt the 2-8-2 Preschool Model of the 2024-25 school year.
