By A. Lang. LHS used to be a great high school. It is only a shadow of that which it was four years ago. Nobody wants to work in our high school any more. And our best teachers take early retirement. Our school is in serious decline.
This is amazing, and just plain stupid. If K12 Inc., Kipp, or any educational company or charter knew our potential they would jump right into our market. Lakewood is the biggest vacuum of educational opportunity in the United States today.
With the right professional leadership, our district will turn around. No teacher will ever want to leave Lakewood again. In fact, the district will become an attractive place to work. And it will provide jobs for our people.
If we lose our high school, we lose an institution that might have a private industry value of $200 million to a billion dollars, with the possibility of gaining hundreds of millions in state funding and tax relief, bringing education to our kids, bringing training for a livelihood to our young people, and lowering high school yeshiva tuition by eliminating the cost of general studies instruction. This is a no-brainer.
Most importantly, our kids will have opportunity. No amount of money, short of hiring teachers for homeschooling can provide them with real English education, certainly not on par with LHS. This is perhaps the greatest civil rights issue today.
LHS will no longer be a failing school. Our enrollment, HSPA scores and graduation rates will go up.
LHS still has the strongest twenty-first century workforce in town. The district is the largest employer in town and the high school attracts people with degrees in engineering, mathematics, physics, computers, or anything else desired.
As the reputation of LHS improves and becomes an attractive place to work, so will the capacity of LHS to serve the children of Lakewood and to provide Lakewood citizens with cutting edge technology. This renaissance of LHS will enhance morale and achievement in LHS. Once all the people of Lakewood are stakeholders in our schools, former teachers, current teachers after school, and gifted students will utilize our connection to the citizens of Lakewood and provide them with a workforce, either full-time or after school, that will make Lakewood businesses and employers internationally competitive.
Yet, our families remain overburdened with tuition, overtaxed for schools that do not serve them, and our children cannot access education. It is time to accommodate the vast majority of the children of this town and to facilitate their opportunity. It is time to make all the people into stakeholders in our success. It is time that people from Lakewood who carry our same burdens become our district leaders.
Why is LHS going downhill fast? The answer was provided on TLS a few times. When the public school population is 80% NON-English speaking what do you think will happen? Teachers teach using English. If the students do not understand English they will not understand and, therefore, will not learn. That leads to LOW test scores. Why is teacher moral so low and they are leaving the school system in droves? For the same reason. You cannot teach students who do not understand English and, due to the low scores the students achieve, reflects on the teachers performance. If the town REALLY WANTED to make Lakewood public schools the best statewide the town would stop being a sanctuary town and remove the “element” that is causing the problems. Would this ever happen? I doubt it due to the cheap labor the students parents provide most of the towns residences and businesses.
4 years ago the LHS was terrible! Has been that way for years. nothing new here. Not much going to change. More improtant is the sporting events and extra activities not the three RRR. Just the world we live in. No parents home to give some hadracha….
I am a teacher at LHS. The most prevalent problem that we run against is the non understanding of our language. English must be taught as a language in pre school.
If a child even if he is willing to learn,does not understand what I am saying,they can not learn.
The failure is English English English.
The frustration is tremendous. If we can not teach here,we will go elsewhere.
if they are spanish speaking, why not have spanish speaking teachers for all classes in the LHS and the language english as a separate class for all the grades. Maybe in this way they will learn alot in their language which would be easier and they will succeed. Over the course of four years of High School they could master the English language. If they are allowed into high school then they deserve an education. BTW I do believe that every child in this town deserves an education and should be getting the help they need for tuition etc… whether they go to private or public schools.
No charter school is going to come to this town. Everyone has great ideas, but try and be a little realistic. The only way for this district to change is thru a huge overhaul of the whole system. Out with the bad, in with the good. Simple.
#1 and #3 HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD. TEACHING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN PRE-SCHOOL IS THE ONLY WAY TO GO. THIS SHOULD BE ANOTHER CHALLANGE FOR THE BOARD TO GO AFTER AND OUR ONLY ANSWER..
The district needs to provide free English education to every child in town. A Lang has the right idea.
#5 Is the fact that people dont talk English the townships issue?!! There should be different tracks. Those that dont talk English and those that do.
The ones that dont talk English should not be holding back the ones that do.
The kids in the public school are only 20% of the population. This writter is proposing to bring opportunity to the rest of us. Stop beefing about the students who cannot speak English. They are only a minor part of the equation. This is about our own kids.
why does not congress declare english as our official language???
when the vote to declare english as the official language of the United States of America came before congress 4 yrs ago it was voted down . thank you lautenburg and menendez !!
The scores of outsiders, professors of education, and consultants brought into our district over the last ten years are oblivious to the dynamics of our community. Lakewood is unique. The economic, political, and moral vitality of Lakewood, with its world renown for learning, has nothing to do with the high school and a majority of our citizens do not even know a single student. They are doomed to fail.
My vision is to make our district, for which each of us pays thousands of dollars per year, into something important to all of us by bringing free distance secular studies for our kids in their yeshivas, free separate gender vocational and professional courses on the LHS campus, and free professional training for every teacher of children in this town who so desires.
Ideas are a dime-a-dozen, but a vision is a hard find.
LHS students will no longer be marginalized because nobody cares about “the public school.” Lakewood High School will become everyone’s–in one way or anther.
Our grandfathers came to this land, A land they did not understand….and they learned English!
i cannot help but be amused by your comment. as you talk about the importance of mastering the english language, maybe take a look at your own spelling. the correct spelling would be “challenge”, with an “e”.
I think it high time people stop writing what’s wrong with the district and do there best to help turn it around. The issues that seperate the residents on public vs non public will never go away. All communities feel too much money is being spent on the other’s eduation. Lets not forget busing when we speak about taxes.
Lakewood needs to come together for all the children regardless of what school they attend.
My father came from Greece as a very young boy, didn’t speak any english. Went to Philidelphia schools and learned it. He was hit a lot by his teachers because he was left-handed. They thought there was something wrong with that. However, he became a successful business man, owning two restaurants in NYC. With six kids, one handicaped, we never needed anything.
The vast majority of our students speak English. Our teachers can overcome their disadvantages.
If faculty members were encouraged to teach in the afternoons in private schools, so that all Lakewood children have the benefit of our professional training, we will have served our citizens.
If businesses in town looked to LHS to employ its students rather than picking them up on Clifton Avenue, so that work and study can be integrated to raise achievement and provide a 21st century workforce for Lakewood, we will have served our citizens.
We have focused, too long, on how to divide the pie.
When all people will come together to be served by our school, we will no longer fail as a district.
Here is a question for A Lang. I am a music teacher with in the district. We have tried for years to bring music classes to the orthodox community. Here are the problems we have been met with.
1. Can not have boys and girls mixed… No problem we were able to accommodate this.
2. Can not have teachers of the opposite gender teaching music lessons…A little more difficult to accommodate but we were willing to make it work.
3. Teacher must be jewish and follow the customs of Judaism…. ok this is where we lost the ability to make it happen. While we have fantastic teachers in the Lakewood District who could teach music lessons, we have no orthodox teachers.
Again I would love to see this happen. I think it would be fantastic to offer a variety of classes to all students in Lakewood, and I would be first in line to teach them, but the above shows the difficulty in making that happen.
There are many LHS teachers, who are not Jewish or orthodox, who have taught secular studies in yeshivas.
Mr. Lang….I also had taught in the Lakewood schools for over 36 years. I know of several fellow public school teachers who taught in yeshivas…but they are ALL Jewish. I also agree strongly with #17. I personally know music classes were proposed by one of the finest musicians and teachers in our state. His accomplishments and accolades go as high as the governors office. Yet he was stone walled by the “powers” in the Orthodox community. The result is…..The Orthodox children LOST a valuable ally and an opportunity to learn about music!
If we held free classes or lessons in the high school, they will come.
i went to a jewish school in lakewood and had plenty of teachers who weren’t jewish
lakewood pay is the lowest in nj
We already off free classes and lessons-it’s called public school enrollment. My children attend public school, but receive religious instruction AFTER school.
It appears as though Mr. Lang is making every effort to bridge the gap between the divided community.
Will these afternoon classes be offered to all students of Lakewood? Meaning of students at the high school want to recieve additional computer training will they be allowed to attend the class with members of the Orthodox community? Will these course be offered by gender/religion?
To A Lang:
Look I’m all for it. But I will tell you we attempted to offer it for free at LHS in the summer and it didn’t work out. If you get students in their i would be happy to teach them.
Have you made a proposal to the board of ed about this?
No such thing as stone walling advertise the service and THE PEOPLE who want will come. We dont have any dictators.
#17: What does music lessons in Yeshiva have to with people talking English in the public school system!I. Im assuming you talk about this every second of the day as if music lessons in the private schools are the core issues in Lakewood. Instead of trying to turn the issues of the public school system into a private school issue, maybe consider the authors suggestions.
throw public schools in the GARBAGE
replace them with CHARTER SCHOOLS
I was and still am ready to go with the girls’ professional courses. We were ready to start last December with this program in cooperation with the Lakewood PCS doing job placement. We felt that we could have a few hundred girls. Our computer teacher wanted and still wants to teach the course. All I asked for then was a $40 per hour stipend, maybe $120 a week.
Yes, the course will be open to all women and girls in Lakewood.
I am working on setting up a charter. A charter can provide free English for yeshiva elementary children.
However, the broader solution to provide educational opportunity for our children, to lower property taxes, increased state funding, vocational and professional courses for yunger leit and their wives, to provide direction for some of our youth, diplomas for our young men, and peace with the general public is here and now, within our reach and in the state administrative code. A charter can only compliment, not replace our public district.
Did the board turn down the $120 a week stipend? If they did deny this amount of money, what chances would there be in the future to have a program like this.
No. It never got past the principal.