Wayne School Named One Of NJ’s Best For COVID Learning Gap Recovery

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“In some cases, parents were working, and it was hard to get children online for their lessons,” she said. “So it was really the job of the district to say, ‘Okay, we know that we have a lot of different learners in a lot of different places, and we really need to work together as a team, not just as district employees, and find ways to include the parent community in student learning.'”

Helping get parents involved included training opportunities for them to learn how to navigate online curriculum and classroom resources during the remote learning period, especially to help younger students find their lessons and assignments. The district also gave teachers access to data on students’ progress so they could see how each individual pupil was faring in certain subjects, Auerbach said.

“That helps them inform their instruction based on the students in their classroom,” she said.

Doolittle said the school community worked together as a team, “and it all came together.”

“The teachers are absolutely amazing with not just their attention to detail in the classroom, but also communicating with parents,” he said. “And the parents here at Packanack are very much involved as well, whether it’s attending events or inquiring about how their children are doing or coming to our school. They’re very much involved, and I think that working together as a team and keeping those local lines of communication are really what helps that all that grow.”

“It was everything together,” Auerbach echoed. “The parents who were helping their children at home, the parents were communicating with the teachers, all of the staff members working collaboratively as a whole.”

As a note, Doolittle became the Packanack Elementary principal for the 2023-2024 school year after Roger Rogalin, who had been principal in the height of the pandemic, retired. Rogalin died on June 14 after a battle with cancer.

Though Packanack was selected as a subject of the Promising Practices Project, it was “a vital district-wide goal” to help returning students both academically and emotionally, Superintendent Dr. Mark Toback told Patch.

The district also pursued a Multi-Tiered System of Supports to target services for students who are struggling, and trained teachers and staff on how best to implement those practices.

“Each of our schools employed the same initiatives regarding pandemic recovery,” Toback noted.

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Auerbach echoed that statement, adding that other Wayne Township Schools buildings also worked as a team as part of that broader district goal.

“It’s hard working in a district where so many people did such a great job in an extremely difficult time, and to single out one,” she said.

“I do think that Packanack did exceptionally well, because of certain factors that aren’t necessarily unique to (the school), but a number of them that fell into place at Packanack just helped to grow these students, maybe at a little bit faster of a rate.”

Packanack Elementary is meeting state standards in English language arts and mathematics and overall proficiency rates improved between the 2021-22 and 2023-23 , state data shows. In general, Wayne elementary school students in grades 3, 4, and 5 are meeting or exceeding pre-pandemic proficiency levels in English language arts, and have also made progress in math recovery — particularly grades 3 and 4.

And overall, Wayne Schools have shown growth on the New Jersey Student Learning Assessments post-pandemic and are headed “back in the right direction” for ELA and math, as Toback outlined in an October board meeting.

What exactly is the Promising Practices Project?

The statewide research effort is a partnership between the New Jersey Department of Education and Rutgers University, through the university’s NJ State Policy Lab and Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies. The goal of the Promising Practices Project is “to explore innovative practices that positively impacted student performance during the pandemic years,” officials said.

According to the NJ Department of Education, the Promising Practices study “analyzes the practices and activities that bolstered student learning” as well as their “positive effect on student performance in ELA and mathematics on the New Jersey State Learning Assessments (NJSLA).”

Throughout the project, officials said the NJ Department of Education and Rutgers research team will focus on the local education agencies selected to “uncover innovative, promising practices that significantly impact students’ academic performance.”

Doolittle said it was “an honor” to be selected to participate in the program. A research team came to the school for an interview with teachers “who were here during the entire journey” about what worked well for students and staff in the building.

“It’s a fantastic accomplishment of the children, of the teachers, and of the community that worked together as a team, and we hope to keep the ball rolling,” he said.

Once the promising practices are determined, the strategies will be disseminated throughout the state via “relevant presentations, reports and convenings.”

To learn more about the 2024 Promising Practices Project and see a full list of schools selected, you can visit the NJ Department of Education website.

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