district highlights - Barnegat Township School District

when I ran one that Splendorio was going to pick up on. You would have had a computer on
every desk with these kids. They signed with Apple and I think they gave them 248 computers.
That would give you the books that would have kids with helmets on it, encyclopedias and all the
necessary properties for these kids to learn. But besides that there is about 248 Apple computers
involved free of charge. Once you get these on the books and see how that works, Microsoft
wanted to do the same thing and when Splendorio took that over he was at HP and it all fell
through because someone said the person who they were going to talk to left. Well as all of us
know when you work for a major corporation the phone number usually stays with that person or
the same person rather who is taking that person’s transfer. So if the person in North Jersey went
over to NY, which she did the phone number would still remain the same for that particular
department.
Seven years ago we lost all those computers and again another Board of Education,
Administration and the faculty is losing out for 248 laptops. It happened in Ocean County and I
have to go back and make sure it was Ocean, it could have been Ocean or Monmouth but there is
248 pieces of hardware that you could have put on a desk of 248 more children by buying
software from Apple, I am sure that is the deal. Same thing with Microsoft, they would have
given teachers their monitors, everything needed and you would not have had any discrepancies
in some of the books you had to replace, kids with helmets, USSR still in some of the books and
what I would like to know also is how many children, I looked in the yearbook for Collins, and
they just came home today or yesterday or over the weekend. There is about 18-19 children in a
class, I don’t know if that is the average across all the schools, how many children are going to
be in an average…what is the student base in each of the classes? If we take children from
schools and move them, if you take three kids from each of the grades you will have 15 average
with all the schools functioning in September. Are we bringing this down too low and where are
they coming from? I know you don’t know where they are coming from yet?
Mr. Houser: Let me answer your first question first regarding the computer issue. We would ask
you to take that to the Pubic Representation Committee because we definitely would be
interested in getting anything we could get as far as a grant or anything to help with computers,
books, anything. The second thing, I am going to ask Brian or Dr. McMahon, Mr. Falkowski or
Dr. McMahon to answer the questions regarding the number of children in the classes?
Dr. McMahon: Basically, the new school opening there is only one regular classroom teacher
being hired. What’s mostly happening is students are leaving with the teacher going with them.
The reason is because we don’t have rooms for music, art, occupational therapy, so the class size
is really not getting lower, the class is moving with the teacher. There is only one fourth grade,
maybe a first grade, one or two teachers hired.
Mr. Checcia: So can we say that with the kids moving, 15 children to a classroom?
Dr. McMahon: Oh no, much higher than that.
Mr. Checcia: 17?
Barnegat Township Board of Education Minutes - June 10, 2008 26