600 children set to enter new K-5 school

Building carries name
that has been in use
for more than 150 years
BY LINDA DeNICOLA
Staff Writer

JEFF GRANIT staff The final pieces of landscaping have been put in place at the new West Freeehold School, Castronova Way, Freehold Township. A student body of 600 will report on the first day of school Sept. 7.

The Freehold Township school district has come a long way from the days of one-room schools. District administrators are about to open the new West Freehold School with more than 40 classrooms and educational advances that were unheard of in 1847 when the original 25-by-40-foot West Freehold School was built on Wemrock Road, not far from the new facility on Castronova Way off Route 537.

In those days the one-room schoolhouse made of hand-hewn beams and sash windows held just a wood stove and desks. Students from all of the elementary grades learned together. Recess was taken on fields adjacent to the Oakley farm.

Today the sprawling new West Freehold School sits a few hundred yards behind its namesake historic landmark. The new facility has a light and cheerful color scheme, holds state-of-the-art computers, speaker systems, electronic bleachers, a media center, a shiny stainless steel kitchen and built-in ceiling projectors.

On Sept. 7 about 600 elementary school pupils in kindergarten through fifth grade will be entering the new school as will approximately 60 certified and support teachers.

Principal Janet Creech said eight new teachers and four new teaching assistants have been hired. Most of the instructional staff has transferred from other schools in the district. There are seven teachers coming from the Donovan School, one from the Errickson School and one from the Catena School, in addition to most of the staff that was at the former West Freehold School on Stillwells Corner Road.

That facility is expected to be converted to an early-learning center for some preschool and special needs children. The name of the school was transferred to the new building in order to retain the tradition of an elementary school in the West Freehold section of the municipality.

In addition to the staff members noted above, four teachers are returning from maternity leave to work in the new school, Creech said.

With a contemporary design, the new school has a spaciousness that was unheard of 150 years ago. There are many high and low windows and painted walls. Creech said young children love color.

"We have color everywhere," she said.

Creech has already memorized the labyrinth school that is spread out over many sections. She knows where every color-coded area begins and ends and what grades are housed there.

In the only two-tiered library/media center in the district, there are floor-to-ceiling windows and lilac paint in the ceiling alcove.

"It’s a very open design," Creech said, pointing out the door that leads from the media center to the computer room filled with rows of 17-inch monitors atop Pentium 4 computers. That room opens to the art room with a separate kiln room for pottery classes.

Near that section is the green, blue and yellow wing that houses the third, forth and fifth grades. Most of the walls are white, but in every room there is a color-accented wall.

Third grade teacher JoAnn Zamrzycki, who had been teaching at the Laura Donovan School where most of the new school’s pupils are coming from, was putting the finishing touches on her room. She said she had been there for three days getting her room in order.

Creech told her that a new carpet with an underwater scene was coming.

Zamrzycki said she knew exactly where she was going to put it.

"I’m really excited," the teacher said.

Although landscapers were still putting down sod last week, boxes were still stacked in some of the classrooms and the carpeting had that "new carpet" smell, the school had a vibrant quality. The attractive office was staffed and many teachers were in their classrooms putting desks in place and adding their own individual touches.

All of the rooms have vaulted ceilings, energy conserving motion sensor lights, a large pull-down screen with LCD projec­tors built in, and a light speed FM system that projects sound, including the teacher’s voice, evenly throughout the room.

"Studies have shown that this helps with student attention and focus," Creech said.

There are many features in the new building that were not possible in the former West Freehold School because of space restrictions. They include features like small group instruction rooms, a pri­vate testing room and a room for the early intervention reading program.

The instrumental music room has an instrument storage area and the vocal music room has many windows looking over the fields on Wemrock Road. It is near the auditorium which opens up onto the cafeteria and multipurpose room.

Also in that section is what Creech called a "meet and greet room" with high windows and bench seating.

"I think this is one of my favorite places. I plan to read here to the kinder­gartners on the first day of school," she said.

All of the district’s elementary schools have new kindergarten pods for the all-day kindergarten program that has been in the planning stages for several years and will debut next week.

Creech said last week there were about 19 pupils enrolled in each kinder­garten class at the West Freehold School, but that could change as people continue to register their youngsters. She called the program "hands-on, inquiry-based."

All of the kindergarten rooms have folding partitions that can be opened to allow the classes to come together. The section also has its own lunchroom and multipurpose room so the kindergarten children do not eat with the older stu­dents.

Students who were attending a one-room school did not need directions to their classrooms during the first days of the new semester, but students who ar­rive at the new West Freehold School may need some help to find their way around. Colored balloons placed outside each instructional wing will identify classroom hallways for each grade on the first few days.

In the old days, corporal punishment was the accepted way to motivate stu­dents. Today, that would be called child abuse. In the old days, the children were expected to gather the firewood to heat the room on cold days. Today, the stu­dent, or teacher, just has to clap her hands to turn the lights on.