New Midland Ave. classrooms are nearing completion.
KEARNY –
The last piece of the new Kearny Board of Education facility on Midland Ave. – two basement classrooms – should be ready to go by the fall term, said Schools Superintendent Patricia Blood.
Both classrooms are in the process of being assembled in-house by BOE maintenance crews.
Blood said that one room will be occupied by the district’s centralized Gifted & Talented class and the other, by its Educational Behavior Modification class, otherwise known as in-house suspension.
Both programs have been operating out of the classroom trailers parked on the front lawn of Kearny High School during the ongoing construction there. The district had previously rented space at Grace Methodist Church for the EBM contingent.
The G&T students, from grades 2 through 6, are currently bused, on a rotating basis, between their home schools and the high school site for the one day per week accelerated learning program.
Plans call for the G&T youngsters to move in first in September while the transition for EBM is expected to take a bit longer, Blood said. “We want to achieve their move with the least disruption as possible – maybe by the end of the first semester. We can have lunch brought down to the students from Lincoln School or from the high school. And the class will come equipped with bathrooms.”
Other expectations for the new school year, Blood said, are that some of the new windows and the new front entrance doors for the high school “should be in by January” and that mid-term and final exams will be phased out in favor of the state-mandated PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College & Careers) testing.
“This [exchange] gives us valuable instruction time,” Blood said. “The PARCC will give us valuable data which will be coupled with departmental assessment for the first time.”
– Ron Leir
