The Asbury Park Board of Education meeting will be held at Bradley Elementary on Wednesday, February 24, 2010, at 6:30pm.
Please make every effort to attend. There will be RIFs on this agenda due to serious budget cuts within the district. Come out support your staff members, colleagues, family members and friends.

Prepare for budget elections
With all the problems facing the U.S. economy and the economy in this state, with record foreclosures and rising unemployment, your local association must be prepared for a difficult school budget election season. Contact your UniServ office to check on the date for a “Pass the School Budget” workshop in your county.

Are your members registered to vote?
You can start your school budget campaign by ensuring that your members are registered to vote for the April 20 school budget elections and by working with your administration and parents to register parents to vote. Visit the Division of Elections website for voter registration forms and the addresses to which they can be mailed.

Vote by mail for your school district’s budget
Don’t forget how easy it is to vote in New Jersey! You can vote by mail and it counts the same. No need to wait in line at the polls; you don’t even need an excuse as you did in the past to vote by mail. Simply print out and complete a Mail-In Ballot Application and mail it to your county clerk. Once you fill out the application you will receive, prior to Election Day, a voting ballot in the mail. Remember, if you apply for a Mail-In Ballot, you cannot show up at the polls on Election Day to vote.

Does your school plan to celebrate Read Across America?
Read Across America—a national day to celebrate reading—is slated for Tuesday, March 2. If you or your school has an awesome activity planned over the next several weeks, let the Cat know about it!

Most Elementary School Principals Say Recess Positively Impacts Achievement, Poll Shows.

The Christian Science Monitor (2/4, Paulson) reported that a new Gallup survey shows “more than 80 percent of elementary-school principals believe that recess has a positive impact on academic achievement.” Also, according to “two-thirds of the principals” polled, “students listen better and are more focused in class” after recess. “The findings support a growing wave of educators who are pushing to restore the place of recess in schools and, in some cases, to improve its quality.” Schools in some cities such as “Chicago, Atlanta, and Boston…have dropped recess completely,” amid budget cuts and an increasingly intense focus on test preparation.

Nancy Shute wrote in the US News and World Report (2/4) On Parenting blog, “Recess has almost disappeared from the curriculum at many schools, edged out by more math and reading work as schools push to raise scores on standardized tests.” But more and more research “shows that adding more play to the day, not less, improves the likelihood of better test scores and behavior.” However, Shute adds, “The news wasn’t all good. The principals said most of their discipline problems happened during a recess or lunch break and said that they would like to have more staff to monitor the playground, better equipment, and training in playground management.”

In the Classroom