Six
new schools lead overhaul
Wednesday,
September 08, 2004 • BY STEVE CHAMBERS •
Star-Ledger Staff
In a third-floor classroom
so white it gleamed, teacher Suzanne Maxwell was getting
acquainted with her new fourth-grade class yesterday,
breaking the ice with Amanda Sar and her classmates during a
friendly quiz.
"Raise your hand if you
are excited to be in school," she said after finding out who
had sisters, brothers and dogs. Every hand shot
up.
When Amanda received a
letter in the spring informing her she would be attending
the new Main Street School in Orange, she was
thrilled.
"I was so excited," said
Amanda, 10, smiling shyly. "It was like winning the
lottery."
Built with $18.8 million
in state money, Main Street is one of six schools opening
this fall that are part of a much larger overhaul of
crumbling schools in 31 of the poorest
districts.
Ordered by the courts in
1998 to reverse dangerous and obsolescent conditions, the
Legislature approved $6 billion for the job two years later.
Another $2.6 billion was set aside to pay partial expenses
for new suburban schools.
The urban program got off
to a slow start, but after Gov. James E. McGreevey created
the Schools Construction Corp. in July 2002, the pace
quickened. Last year the SCC completed $660 million worth of
"health and safety" work by replacing ancient boilers,
leaking roofs and drafty windows.
Now, the SCC has focused
all its efforts on the broader goal of building modern
schools. This school year, 20 new, renovated or enlarged
schools will open, and next year will see another 30 or more
major projects completed.
"It's an exciting time,"
John Spencer, who runs the SCC, said last week as he drove
from one new school to another for inspections. "You can see
it in the faces of the kids and the teachers."
Spencer is a firm believer
in the idea that new buildings will translate into better
performance in districts where test scores lag and dropout
rates are higher.
"I believe if you give
these children facilities they have not had for years, that
it has to make a difference in the way they are educated and
their ability, down the road, to compete for the better
jobs," he said.
What the infusion of cash
means to Orange is remarkable.
Yesterday, as students
reported to a crowded gymnasium, Amanda admitted being a bit
nervous. The teachers, even the principal, had confessed as
much.
This was, after all, a
very new venture; the air crackled with promise -- and
anxiety. In a sense, this Orange school will test a theory
-- one under which the state is investing billions of
dollars -- that new, clean, safe facilities will translate
into a better education for students in the state's poorest
communities.
Main Street School is
state-of- the-art, complete with TVs and computers in all
classrooms (they hadn't yet been installed yesterday), fancy
media centers (what libraries are called these days), an
underground parking garage, a full- size kitchen complete
with pizza ovens, and a gym that widened the eyes of young
basketball team hopefuls.
For the 400 children who
will attend grades kindergarten through eight there, the
school offers a facility as nice as any in the suburbs. The
new school also will allow class sizes in feeder schools to
fall. Places like Cleveland and Lincoln elementary schools
will see a drop from roughly 27 children per class to about
21.
Superintendent Nathan
Parker said that change and others coming behind it will
transform education in the 4,500-student district. Another
new K-8 school will allow a phase-out of the district's
middle school, which has a reputation for fights and other
troubles. But even Orange Middle opened this year with 70
fewer students because of Main Street's new
classrooms.
"This win goes far beyond
the walls of Main Street School," Parker said. "There is a
huge ripple effect."
The joy was palpable two
weeks ago at a ribbon-cutting and orientation for parents
and their children.
"This has been a long time
coming," said board president Arthur Griffa, joking later in
his speech that he was glad it hadn't taken so long that he
had to come in a wheelchair. "I joined the facilities
committee in 1990, and we were talking about this school. We
feel very good."
After the fairly low-key
affair, roughly 400 people showed up for the orientation --
a relief to Principal Carol Brotspies and her assistant,
Kimberly Santos. Attendees filled the hundreds of folding
chairs in the gym, overflowing into the built-in
bleachers.
Brotspies, a 30-year
teaching veteran of the district who worked hard all summer
to hire and orient a teaching staff of 44, started out on an
optimistic note.
She listed the building
features and talked about how schedule juggling would ensure
extra reading and math instruction, how each child would
receive a planner for keeping track of homework.
Then she laid down the
law.
"Unacceptable behavior
will not be tolerated," she said to a chorus of
"amens."
"Timeliness will be very
important," she added. "To be early is to be on time. To be
on time is to be late. To be late is
unacceptable."
Such words were music to
the ears of Benjamin Sar, Amanda's father.
Sar, who emigrated to the
United States from Liberia four years ago with his wife and
three children, drove by the school each day on his way to
work. He was impressed, but coming from a land where
instructors stress discipline, he had concerns.
"I have great hopes for
this school," he had said in an earlier interview. "I just
hope the interior, the level of instruction, the teachers,
the discipline, keeps up. This is something that seems to be
missing in the public schools."
However, as the assembled
parents and children broke into smaller groups that night to
tour the school, Sar and others were impressed.
"This is beautiful," said
Ellen Shepherd, a school bus driver whose daughters,
Shaquana, 12, and Shakiesha Harper, 13, will be attending.
"It's got so many windows. And I was sitting in the front
row smiling when Mrs. Brotspies was talking about
discipline. It's all wonderful."
Her husband, James, nodded
and smiled as they entered a spacious classroom on the
fourth floor, where the girls will attend seventh
grade.
Yesterday morning, the
sisters stood nervously in the gym shortly after 8 a.m.,
looking spiffy in their dark blue shirts and skirts, one of
a number of approved uniforms the children must
wear.
Farther down on the
bleachers, Sania Kamran, 8, sat beside her mother, Yasmin
Ogeerally, a preschool teacher born in Trinidad, and waited
for her third-grade teacher to call her.
She whispered to her
friend, 8-year-old Kimberly Rosales, about the shiny new
building.
"I've never been in this
school before, so I'm a little nervous," Kimberly said. "But
it looks really nice."
As is typical of first
days, things were somewhat chaotic. The office was packed
with parents new to the neighborhood and trying to register
their children. Some had been told in the spring that their
child would be attending the school, but the sending grid
had changed over the summer.
In some classrooms, only
half the students showed up.
But Brotspies said she was
confident that things would very quickly come
together.
"We are going to give them
dedication and a whole new way of instruction," she said.
"We are in a new facility. What more could you
want?"
Steve Chambers can be reached at (973) 392-1674 or
schambers@star ledger.com.
Copyright 2004 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
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