HOWELL – Members of the Howell Township Board of Education have voted to approve the recommendation to designate two schools as homes of the new preschool expansion program.
At a recent board meeting, members voted in favor of choosing Adelphia and Newbury Schools as the district’s North and South Early Learning Centers for the 2024-2025 school year.
So far, district officials have been hard at work coming up with a plan for their free preschool program after receiving a $2,286,405 grant from the state.
At the time, Superintendent Joseph Isola said the money will be used for a five-year plan to serve preschoolers in Howell. Its first year began in fall 2022.
During year one and two, the school accommodated 165 and 321 students. The district expects there to be around 900 students by year five. The district has 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 would be able to come to the district for the full day program at no cost.
At previous meetings, board members have been diligently going through the details and selecting plans that would work best for the school community.
In the July meeting, board members approved the 2-8-2 Model, which would offer two early learning centers, eight K-5 schools, and two middle schools.
The board has now approved what schools will be holding the early learning centers and states that the next steps are to create boundary lines.
“This plan will not only accommodate our preschool students, the reorganization will have a direct impact on all of our schools. Next steps will be to establish boundary lines in order to reorganize the remaining primary and elementary schools to meet our new K-5 configuration,” the district said in an official statement. “As we move forward in preparing for the district’s reorganization, we will work collaboratively to listen to feedback and attempt to accommodate the needs of our community. While we recognize that change brings uncertainty, we strongly believe that these necessary changes will ultimately benefit our students and our district as a whole.”
At the meeting, Isola explained the reason behind the decision of Adelphia and Newbury Schools was due to several codes and rules they needed to follow such as required classroom size, specific bathroom requirements, as well as any required renovations.
“We want to minimize the outlay of financial resources, that way we can put that money towards the education of children. So, we looked at the many factors that would be involved in picking a building and what modifications or renovations would be needed. That was another evaluation point,” Isola said.
Considerations that were made included cost associated with potential renovations, pockets of student density throughout the district, before and aftercare, specialized programs such as special education and ESL, and lastly transportation routes.
“At the end of the day, there were three schools out of our 10 elementary buildings that had rooms of 700 sq ft or greater. All other buildings would have required massive renovations,” Isola said.
Knowing one school would be serving the north side of town and the other the south, officials ultimately chose Adelphia and Newbury Schools, stating the two best meet the district’s needs for the early learning centers.
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