Eatontown BOE Meets and Learns the Value of ActivBoard Technology

The Eatontown Board of Education met on April 26 at the Memorial Middle School on the eve of the school board elections.  

• The meeting got underway with a demonstration of the district's Promethean ActivBoards, which act as high-tech white boards for teachers to use to enhance lessons.  A movie was put together by special education teachers Linda McNelis and Tiffany Boufford and Supervisor of Special Services Lee Lasser demonstrating use of the boards in the classroom.  The teachers said they find students are far more attentive and engaged in lessons when they are presented on an interactive white board.  Currently all the special education classrooms are equipped with ActivBoards, said Lasser. The board hopes to use federal stimulus funding to increase the number of these white boards in the class rooms, according to Eatontown Superintendent Scott McCue. There are plans to have interactive white boards in all 29 regular education classrooms by the end of the next school year, said McCue.
•  The school received $15,337 from a FEMA grant to cover the costs of snow removal after the winter's snowstorms, said McCue. 
• There was a discussion of the school calendar for the 2011-2012 school year.  As Monmouth County moves towards a county-wide school calendar, the Eatontown calendar for the upcoming school year has been aligned with the Monmouth Regional High School calendar, according to McCue.  The discussion centered on the need to begin the school year before Labor Day and that if all three built in snow days are used, concerns that the school year would end on a Monday.
• Eatontown School Board President Mark Kramer questioned whether the emergency management system known as Code Red could be used as a general notification system for the district. According to McCue, the message system is currently used only for emergency messages to parents.  While there is no move towards using this system for general notifications to parents,  a proposal would need to be put before the board's operations committee for approval.

McCue urged all residents to vote in Wednesday's school board elections.