By Laura Waters
The dog days of summer may be slow, but life at Lawrence Township Public Schools moves at a fast clip. Ben Franklin Elementary School hosts most of our summer programs (the air conditioning really helps!) and a new summer enrichment program has started at Lawrence Middle School. Our maintenance staff is completing projects reserved for this time of year, and administrators and educators are busy preparing for the fall influx of students. Teachers will first arrive on Sept. 3 for their first Professional Development Day, and the first day for students is Monday, Sept. 9, which will be a full day.
While many students will simply return to the building they attended last year, quite a few of our children will enter new buildings, which is always a transition period for the entire family. One of the hardest transitions, we find, is the step from one of our four kindergarten-3rd grade schools to one big 4th-6th grade building. Instead of these four relatively small neighborhood schools—Eldridge Park, for example, enrolls only about 250 kids—all 4th graders throughout town converge at Lawrence Intermediate School, with an enrollment of over 900 children.
In order to facilitate this transition, LIS assistant principal Cindy Westhead led Unity Day, when all rising 4th graders experienced a full day orientation at their new school. The children took tours throughout the building (conducted by 5th graders), played team-building games, had lunch together, and posed for photographs. The LIS PTO generously provided the new students with drawstring backpacks decorated with the LIS logo.
Some of you already know that last year LTPS was selected by the State Department of Education as one of 11 pilot districts for the new principal tenure and evaluation program. This appointment allows us to have a voice in the new legislatively-mandated program that evaluates the proficiency of both teachers and principals through a combination of rigorous observations and analysis of student growth, as measured by standardized assessments. Officially, all districts throughout the state will be required to adopt these new metrics in September. This past year’s experience puts us well ahead of the curve, and the state will continue to rely on LTPS for feedback.
Laura Waters, Ph.D., is president of the Lawrence Township Board of Education. Her email is laurawaters6@gmail.com.
