WOODBINE – Mayor William Pikolycky described the borough’s efforts to establish closer ties with Stockton University to enhance the elementary school’s performance.
He spoke to Borough Council Sept. 8.
“We had a great meeting today at their main campus in Galloway with Stockton President Dr. Harvey Kesselman, the Provost Lori Vanmeulen, two deans for academic affairs, academic deans and other Stockton officials about enhanced opportunities for their student teachers at the Woodbine Elementary School. You can see from the high level of the Stockton officials at this meeting they are serious in exploring how to expand our partnership.”
Joining the mayor were Anthony DeVico, school superintendent, and Committee member Michael Benson.
“We have had a very successful program with Stockton for 20 years where they would send student interns to many different professional development programs and seminars at the Azeez Center, for example,” said Benson.
“What we talked about today is beyond what we’ve been doing in the past by integrating student interns, the word ‘embed’ was used in the elementary school.
“Perhaps at a later date, faculty would also have exchanges back and forth,” continued Benson.
“A principal idea is to have close and direct hands-on approaches at different levels that will achieve more educational benefits for our children and also help the student interns become great teachers,” he continued.
Ultimately, said Pikolycky, “An aim resulting from this meeting is to make Woodbine an instructional site that provides professional and educational advantages for everybody. There’s a model we want to follow to have our community showcase the university in its elementary education program at Woodbine.
“With PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) testing, which might change or disappear who knows but for now we have it, we can focus together on improvements to achieving great scores.
“This type of direct training will help us with regulations that are always changing. And with ratcheting back of in-service training for example, as the superintendent has mentioned, this enhanced partnership will be valuable. He is going to brief the school board which is great,” Pikolycky said.
The mayor emphasized that moving forward with the Stockton partnership “could change the face of the school. This is like paying for a consultant to come help you, and it will, of course, be at no charge to our Woodbine taxpayers.” Benson concluded, “We are hopeful; let’s see what comes of it.”
To contact Camille Sailer, email csailer@cmcherald.com.
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