East Windsor Students Greet First Day Back With Mostly Smiles

Students in East Windsor Public Schools were greeted with a beautiful day of weather as pre-K, grades 1-9 started classes Wednesday.
Principal Laura Foxx said the first day went smoothly and the students all seemed happy to be in school.

“It’s great to have the kids back,” Foxx said. “I missed them all summer long.”

The students were greeted with a freshly painted interior in Broad Brook. The brick walls in the hallways were painted with a cream color.

About 350 students reported for school at Broad Brook, kindergarten students were being screened by teachers and report for their first day of classes on September 6, Foxx said.

welcomed freshmen only to their first day of school Wednesday.  They were given time to get oriented in their new environment, officials said. The other three grades start classes on Thursday.

Superintendent of Schools Theresa Kane said the school system opens with new technological improvements such as a new point of sale system that allows parents to load money into cards which their kids use to buy food in the cafeterias.

A new online portal called EdLine will allow parents to check their children’s grades. The bandwidth of the school’s computer network has been expanded as well, Kane said. The schools’ entire server infrastructure has been upgraded as well.

The school system, through retirements and people moving on to other jobs, has 21 new teachers this school year, Kane said.

“We’ve been actively recruiting talent and we’re excited,” Kane said.

 Because of a need for improvement in 3rd grade literacy skills, East Windsor was named an Alliance District and applied for, and received, a state grant for $168,335 that allowed officials to hire three literacy teachers. They are assigned to grades K through 3, Kane said.

The school district is ahead of schedule in implementing the common core curriculum and is also fully implementing a new teacher evaluation system that it has been piloting for several years.

“We’ve got a lot going on,” Kane said.