District may enclose school pod classrooms

BY JOSH DAVIDSON
Staff Writer

MIDDLETOWN — The Board of Education is considering changes to Ocean Avenue Elementary School.

Board members reviewed the school’s pod area, which consists of six open classrooms, and discussed their findings at the board’s Feb. 18 workshop.

Board member N. Britt Raynor said the classes in the pod area are crowded and noisy because they are not separated from each other.

"The people at the Ocean Avenue School were very patient and they’ve waited long enough," he said. "They’ve reached out to the board members to show them the problem and the board is now aware of it."

Educators believed, in the past, that the open space pod classrooms would be beneficial by keeping students close together, but administrators and teachers began complaining about the classroom design, Raynor said.

"You had six teachers basically teaching in a big open space," he said.

Enclosing the pod area at the Ocean Avenue school would cost the district about $400,000. The renovations would include adding walls and doors to define the classrooms, updating lighting, creating a new hallway and aligning exits for safety, he said.

"You would create basically six full classrooms with the amenities that go with them, and you would have one small auxiliary room," he said.

The Nut Swamp Elementary School community was the first district elementary school to have its pod classrooms enclosed, he said.

"If you look at the pod area of Nut Swamp in its improved state, that’s what Ocean Avenue should look like," he said.

New Monmouth Elementary School has also requested to have its pod area enclosed.

Ocean Avenue was scheduled to be second in line to have its pod area enclosed, but somehow was overlooked, Raynor said. It was not the board’s responsibility to enclose the pod area at Ocean Avenue, but the board should have been conscious that it was not done, he said.

"There’s no doubt that this should have been done four or five years ago," Raynor said. "We let the ball down and I’m one of them because I should have made sure this was taken care of before I left [the board in 2000] and I didn’t."

Raynor is not planning a reelection bid to the board and will step down in April.

The project, if approved by the district, may be completed by September, possibly by the next school year, Superintendent of Schools David Witmer said.

The pod area will be addressed at Ocean Avenue before New Monmouth, he said. When the Ocean Avenue project is completed, the district will review the pod area at New Monmouth.

"Nut Swamp loved the improvements and, to this day, are thankful that they have them," Raynor said.