LAKEWOOD — The township middle school has delayed its Friday reopening until next week because eight modular units the district planned to deploy to ease crowding won't be ready.
All other district campuses will restart Friday as planned.
The calendar of events on the Lakewood school district web site says Lakewood Middle School won't start classes until Tuesday. A message through the district's messaging system read:
"All schools will open but for the middle school on Friday. Middle school on Tuesday."
The message says that the modular units won't be ready for inspection until Saturday and that the township will conduct its inspection Sunday.
Board of Education attorney and district spokesperson Michael Inzelbuch was not immediately available for comment. Lakewood Education Association president Kimberlee Shaw said she had just been notified and couldn't comment.
Among myriad logistical challenges, Lakewood Middle School faces the most severe overcrowding in the entire district. Nearly 20%, or 1,283 of the 6,500 public schools students last academic year, sat in middle school classrooms, district data shows.
Enrollment has climbed from 1,228 in 2016-17 to an expected 1,303 for the school year starting Friday, a 6% increase, district enrollment figures show. Even district officials acknowledge that the 63-year-old building has been under stress for several years.
As a result, the middle school has become a focus of concern in the district's reopening plan, which calls for in-person instruction across the district. Most districts in the state are reopening with virtual learning or a hybrid of virtual and in-person instruction, both aimed at mitigating spread of the coronavirus.
The 750-member LEA has opposed the district's reopening contending the plan doesn't do enough to protect students, teachers and staff. A chief concern: Crowding in the district makes social distancing a near impossibility.
The district had promised the $2.2 million classroom project would be ready for the first day school. When functional, the eight modular units will accommodate 120 students.
Lakewood is among the 63 New Jersey districts, and the only one in Ocean County, planning to reopen with full in-person instruction.
The modular units alone won't be enough to solve Lakewood's overcrowding problem. Some classrooms in the middle school will have as many as 30 students, shielded off from one another by polycarbonate barriers.
In all, the district says it has spent $330,435 getting the school ready to reopen.
On Aug. 26, more than 150 of Lakewood Education Association members and supporters protested from their cars, honking as they drove in front of the middle school as the Board of Education held an executive session inside the building. It was the first time the union publicly chastised the reopening plan.
Six days earlier, the board held its first in-person meeting in five months. About 100 parents watched the meeting, sitting in chairs set up outside the middle school and watching the proceedings inside on a large screen. The board members discussed the reopening plans, with their remarks translated into Spanish.
While the district won over several parents who switched their children from remote instruction to in-person education, other parents expressed frustration when technical difficulties marred the broadcast and they didn't get answers to their questions. They began arguing among themselves.
The school board claims a majority of parents in a survey expressed a desire for schools to reopen as usual. Under Gov. Phil Murphy's guidance to schools, all districts must accommodate the wishes of parents who elect to have their children learn remotely. Lakewood, however, has no built-in virtual instruction plan.
School officials have maintained that virtual instruction is a challenge because so many students lack computers. On Tuesday, just three days before the now-aborted reopening of the middle school, the district said it would consider a hybrid plan for the middle school. The district said it was looking into the purchase of some 1,000 Chromebook computers.
Lakewood has recorded some 2,898 COVID-19 positive cases. The disease has taken 198 lives.
Gustavo Martínez Contreras covers Lakewood. Contact him at gmartinez@gannettnj.com or at 732-643-4061.
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September 03, 2020 at 07:48PM
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