Today is the First Day of School: A Historic Day in Newark, New Jersey

Today marks a historic day in the City of Newark.  While there is so much going on in the world around us, the start of this school year is historic for many reasons.

Superintendent León said, “Today, we begin our first school year under local control in over two decades, we take our first steps in implementing the nation’s first ten-year strategic plan The Next Decade: 2020-30, and we launch over 80 new curricular documents focused on providing rigorous instruction to students.”  He added, “This is a historic start to this school year.”

In preparation for this school year, the district has outlined ingress/egress procedures, created and trained our own specialized facilities team utilizing a new intensive cleaning and sanitizing initiative, provided professional development to staff, distributed thousands of Chromebooks, digitized the registration process, and continued to distribute meals to students and families throughout the city. When students log on for remote learning today, they will be greeted by their teachers who now have new and updated curricula, digital learning platforms, digital books, and a variety of online assessments.

Since April of last school year, the Office of Teaching and Learning, along with classroom teachers, coaches, and department chairpersons have worked to create 89 new curriculum documents, as well as 22 new courses of study.  Students will be able to demonstrate their knowledge of mathematics, science, foundational literacy, reading, and language through online benchmark assessments.  In addition, we have revamped curriculum in civics and Amistad, and planned changes in Black and Latino Studies courses.  We have prioritized social emotional learning as critical to the success of our students and we will be assessing student needs beginning on day one.  All of this work will be complemented with progress monitoring assessments—very brief assessments that are used to better ensure students meet end-of-the-year learning targets.

Today is the first day of remote instruction, truly a historic day in Newark.

For more information, please contact:

Newark Board of Education
Nancy Deering, Interim Executive Director
Communications
973-733-6265