Cape Island Schools Use Shared Services With Regional District to Trim Costs

CAPE MAY – All schools everywhere are facing almost daily challenges in keeping academic standards as high as they can while paying attention to costs of creating the best environments for their students. In the Cape May area, two elementary schools are meeting those challenges so that their students benefit and taxpayers are also satisfied.
“We’re small by most standards, about 185 students in pre-K through sixth grade, so we work hard to make sure our students can still have access to all the services and advantages of a larger school,” said John Thomas, business administrator and board secretary for the Cape May City Board of Education.
“The City of Cape May does a great job for us, for example with snow removal that this year alone saved us about $3,000-$4,000 and trash recycling each year worth about $2,000. We also have shared services of a child study team consisting of a social worker and case worker as well as a speech therapist from Lower Cape May Regional School District since we don’t have enough children to have this type of support just for our school,” explained Thomas.
An organization that might not be expected to provide important resources to the school is the Coast Guard located in Cape May. “Under our ‘PIE’ (Partners in Education) arrangement we have come to feel very fortunate to have such support from our local Coast Guard contingent,” continued Thomas. “Coast Guard staff really is a big help with after-school homework and other clubs, which means a lot to the children. And three or four years ago when we got a new playground, the Coast Guard sent 40 volunteers for three full days to help set up the equipment from the supplier which saved us around $20,000, a huge benefit.”
On the same frugal page as his colleague is Dr. Alfred Savio who wears multiple hats for the West Cape May Elementary School. In a bit of an understatement acknowledging that “we have a lean school administration,” Savio said he is the school’s superintendent, principal, chief secretary of the school board and business administrator. A few years ago his school had only 37 students and faced being closed or consolidated with Lower Cape May Regional. A consolidation option was rejected since parents and others were skeptical it would actually save money and no one wanted to risk losing control over the children’s education or the local culture that any school represents.
In the nick of time, under the initiative put into place by the state called the “Choice District” program, West Cape May was chosen as a receiving school for up to 32 children from anywhere in New Jersey.
As a result, the school has 80 students with the new “Choice District” coming from other elementary schools in the area seeking West Cape May’s smaller class sizes. Under the state’s cap, West Cape May received funding for these 32 students and then decided to accept another unfunded 11 students bringing its total enrollment to the current 80 with the hope that the state will raise its cap for school year 2017-2018.
“Since we are still small we have teachers double-class teach which means that most grades are combined, pre-K with K, third and fourth grades and fifth and sixth grades. These combined classes have about 20 students each. We actually have enough for individual separate first and second grades with about 20 students in each of those grades. That ‘bubble’ is a result of the ‘Choice District’ influx we received when the program first started,” said Savio.
The school remains small enough so that the teachers have close interactions with their students and know how each student can best learn. “The small classes, parent involvement and individual attention that the teachers are able to give has resulted in our school’s ranking in the 99th percentile for academic performance and the 100th percentile for factors such as high school graduation rates once our students get there and attendance,” stated Savio.
Once they are promoted from sixth grade from either of these schools, students go to Lower Cape May Regional District schools for seventh through 12th grades.
To contact Camille Sailer, email csailer@cmcherald.com.