Lakewood PS Teachers Sign up Teach STEM in Yeshivas, Meeting tomorrow

"The emphasis on STEM education has grown in recent years as the digital economy has increased demand for ever-higher technical skills among graduates joining the workforce. Much of Lakewood’s local economy has traditionally been based on lower-skilled light manufacturing work. Kotler said tech companies have been starting up, and “the vision for Lakewood has been to move beyond light manufacturing.”

Tomorrow  Tuesday morning 10:30 am  the Lakewood school district will host a meeting at the High School for parents of the 36,500 children in private schools, and representatives from among the 127 yeshivas informing  and seeking consultation about the new STEM grant program for public school teachers. A Photo Id Will Be Required To Access The Building

The new grant program  will pay public school teachers to moonlight teaching STEM classes in private schools.  The Department of Education will provide a total of $5 million in grants to pay teachers who have voluntarily opted to register for the program and have worked out a scheduling agreement with their own public school district and the private school that wants to hire him or her to teach a limited number of classes involving science, technology, engineering or math

.NJ.com reports  The Lakewood Public School District is leading Ocean County by far in the number of teachers who have made themselves available to private schools by registering for the STEM grant program with the Ocean County superintendent of schools. Of the 16 Ocean County teachers who have registered for program, 15 of them are from Lakewood, according to the district.

“We’re adding thousands of children a year to the community, and we need teachers,” said Rabbi Aaron Kotler, a leader of the local Orthodox community and president and CEO of Beth Medrash Gavoha, or BMG, a university-level yeshiva.



 Others have criticized the STEM grant program, including the Education Law Center in Newark, which has opposed the program as public spending on private schools, a spending figure that already totals $118 million for the 2019-20 school year.

“This is latest move by New Jersey legislators to throw ever increasing amounts of taxpayer dollars to private schools while, at the same time, underfunding our public schools to the tune of over $1.5 billion,” David Sciarra, the law center’s executive director, wrote in an email.....

In Lakewood, families from the township‘s rapidly growing Orthodox Jewish community send 36,500 children private yeshivas, said Michael Inzelbuch, the Lakewood Public School District’s lawyer and spokesman. Lakewood’s public school population, made up largely of Hispanic, African-American and non-Jewish white students, is about 6,100.


The emphasis on STEM education has grown in recent years as the digital economy has increased demand for ever-higher technical skills among graduates joining the workforce. Much of Lakewood’s local economy has traditionally been based on lower-skilled light manufacturing work. Kotler said tech companies have been starting up, and “the vision for Lakewood has been to move beyond light manufacturing.”

Kotler and Inzelbuch said they were pushing the state program not because of any particular deficiency of STEM teachers in the yeshivas or poor student performance in that area.

Rather, the rapid growth in the number of Orthodox students — with about 2,500 additional students per year, according to Inzelbuch — means there is an increasingly urgent need in Lakewood for more STEM teachers, who are already a rare commodity in middle and high schools, both public and private.
 read more at
https://www.nj.com/education/2020/02/njs-stem-teachers-can-now-earn-extra-money-moonlighting-at-private-schools.html