What does a school board do when it learns it’s expected to get a windfall of free money from the state? They plan to use it and last week, the Lyndhurst Board of Education outlined a plan that would add new staff, programs and reconfigure curriculum in the district with an additional $432,000 that is expected by way of state aid in the 2007-08 school year.

"More staff at Lyndhurst high school for specialized courses, reduced class sizes, to provide electives to kids; we have not been able to do that for years and haven't been able to do that because of monetary constraints," said Superintendent Joseph Abate. "We're looking at an additional windfall from the state and with that, we are able to provide these types of programs."

The new school funding formula, signed two weeks ago by Governor Jon Corzine, has earmarked an expected 20 percent rise from the district’s $2.161 million award last year. For several years, state aid has been nearly flat in the district, as it has been in most districts statewide.

New staff, new programs

Proposed additional staff at the high school at the beginning of next year’s school year will bring with them, according to administrators, the opportunity to create several new classes. The first new staff member would be an additional business teacher.

"Often the complaint we hear from students is that there’s not enough opportunity for them to be exposed to a variety of stuff," said high school Principal Joseph Sabato. "This will give us the opportunity to present them with a host of opportunities."

The business teacher will enable the district to administer four half-year digital photography classes, two computer illustration classes and a yearbook class, among others.

The next addition would be an additional language arts teacher that would provide a litany of additional classes including four half-year elective journalism courses, two sections of creative writing, ninth grade English, and what Sabato said has been one of the most requested by students, psychology in literature.

"Take the newspaper class, you’ll have half-year photography and half-year journalism," said Sabato. "In a newspaper class, with that background, you’ll be able to have the knowledge to produce a very high quality product because you’ll really be going in-depth. This is what we mean by cross-curricular skills."

Vice Principal Frank Venezia said the school would also be going out to hire a strength and conditioning coach for the school’s sports programs. He attributed the need after reflecting on the amount of injuries student athletes have sustained throughout the past few years. Last year for instance, there were 150 reported injuries to student athletes while already this year with only half the winter season complete, there have been 197.

"One of the things we looked at when we were evaluating our extra-curricular activities, we noticed that there has been a rash of injuries over the past few years," said Venezia. "We’re going to give our students the opportunity to be monitored and taught proper techniques and proper workouts that they need to do to help them succeed throughout the school year."

The district will also hire a full time student assistance counselor (SAC). The position, which will be funded through the released funding of stipends given for the newspaper and yearbook, which will be full-time classes, will act as not only crisis counselor, but a liaison between the high school and planned drop-in center introduced in December by the board.

"By having them 12 months, they would be available in the summer," said Venezia. "Students work with counselors and our part-time SAC now, but when the summer comes, they [students] are left out there."

Technology upgrades

Technology upgrades have often been a second ballot question in the April elections due to budget constraints, and often, it is turned down. Currently, grades four through eight classrooms are equipped with SMART boards, but Assistant Superintendent Tracey Stellato said she wants those sent down to kindergarten to third grade rooms. Four through eight would move up the technological ladder with Tablet PCs, projectors and new software.

Sabato also alluded to a new concept in centralizing technology at the high school. Currently, he said the school does house computer labs, but they are limited in size and capability. The labs only can accommodate 16 students while many classes are over that capacity. To alleviate the situations where those labs are booked are not accessible and to create a more conducive learning environment, he said the high school will implement a technology center that can accommodate 30 students, all using wireless capable computers. In front, the instructor would have the availability of using a Tablet PC, being able to teach from anywhere in the class while connected to all the students.

Now, if you have a class of 25 and happen to have the same period free as the computer lab, you can go into the computer lab and take advantage of those 16 computers and maybe not have everybody on the computer itself," said Sabato. "This [technology center] will allow every student brought into that arena to have access to a computer so that every student is on task."

Accelerating nixed, AP variety

Customarily, Lyndhurst eighth graders that have excelled in mathematics and Spanish have been given the opportunity to partake in the accelerated program. It’s where those students attend Algebra I or Spanish for a period a day at the high school, learning side by side with freshman students in the high school level introductory classes. Those courses are currently not offered at the eighth grade level. Next year, the accelerated program will be nixed and Algebra 1 and Spanish will become available to all eighth graders.

"We are very confident that we will be able to offer an algebra course in eighth grade that would be comparable to what is presently being taught here [the high school] in the freshman year in Algebra I," said Marlene Krupp, the district’s supervisor of mathematics.

Stellato attributed negatives with the accelerated program as students having to make up critical classes they miss at the elementary level on their own time while taking courses at the high school. It also adds more students to already overcrowded high school classes. To accommodate the courses on the elementary level, the elementary school day will add a period by reducing current periods by one minute and taking away excessive homeroom time. The Lyndhurst Education Association has endorsed the plan.

Stellato said the high school would also expand on its Advanced Placement (AP) offerings. Currently, the high school offers seven AP courses ranging from English literature and environmental science to calculus and computer science. By next year, she said the offering would be broadened to 13 and by 2008-09, another would be thrown in the mix. For next year, ideas such as physics, Italian language and art history are in the works for additional AP courses.