Student achievements take center stage
Director of guidance is proud of seniors' college acceptances
BY DAVE BENJAMIN Staff Writer
The academic achievements of the Jackson Memorial High School class of 2008 were front and center at the July 15 meeting of the Jackson Board of Education.

Laura Wheaton

Director of Guidance Laura Wheaton discussed the accomplishments of the Jackson Memorial senior class members who completed their high school careers in June.

"The class of 2008 has graduated and now the final piece of the puzzle has been put in place," Wheaton said. "I would like to share with you a snapshot of the finished picture."

Wheaton said National Merit students placed among the top 5 percent of more than 1.4 million students who entered, and seven Jackson Memorial seniors received such distinction.

There were 18 seniors who qualified as Rutgers University Bloustein Scholars based on their class rank and SAT scores, she said. Six of those students will be accepting the scholarship by attending a college in New Jersey.

Wheaton said the block schedule in place at the high school affords students many opportunities and advantages. This becomes most obvious when the students' transcripts are compared with those of students in other school districts, she said.

"Each year over 200 students participate in advanced placement (AP) courses," she told the board members. "The top three students in the class of 2008 took between eight and 10 AP courses each. Students in the top 20 percent had a 3.0 grade-point average (GPA) or better, while 42 students had a GPA of over 4.5. This is evidence that our students are taking advantage of the curricular opportunities Jackson has to excel academically."

Upon examining the number of college applications that were submitted by Jackson Memorial students, Wheaton said the everincreasing trend of students completing their college applications online has multiplied twofold compared to the number of schools to which they are applying.

During the past academic year, guidance counselors at Jackson Memorial processed 1,797 applications from 619 students. There were 701 seniors at the high school during the 2007-08 school year.

"The number of acceptances, 1,358, speaks volumes about the difficult choices our students had to make in April when selecting the college they would be attending this fall," Wheaton said. "In the end, the class of 2008 will be walking onto 315 different campuses spread throughout the country."

She told the board members that 286 students from the class of 2008 (41 percent) will be attending a four-year college; 293 students (42 percent) will be attending a two-year college; 25 students (3 percent) will be going to a vocational or technical school; 13 students (2 percent) will be serving in the military; and 77 students (12 percent) will be entering the work force.

"Each year, U.S. News and World Report publishes a ranking of the top 50 schools (colleges and universities)," Wheaton said. "[In this class] 62 of our seniors were accepted to 18 of the top colleges and 20 graduates have chosen to attend Princeton, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, the University of North Carolina, Lehigh, New York University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Boston College, Rensselaer and Penn State."

Wheaton said that is an impressive list of schools.

She said some families are experiencing the financial hardship of the current times. Therefore, some students who may have been accepted to a four-year school are taking advantage of the New Jersey Student Tuition Assistance Reward Scholarship (NJ STARS) program.

Wheaton said 23 of the 293 Jackson students who will be attending a two-year college program this fall will be going tuition free under the NJ STARS program. If they maintain a GPA of 3.0 or higher at Ocean County College, they could receive free tuition for the third and fourth years at any New Jersey state college, she said.

"It's a wonderful opportunity for the students in our top 20 percent to consider strongly," she said.

In discussing scholarships and grants, Wheaton said that at Scholarship Night, which was held in June, the Jackson School District honored 154 seniors by presenting them with 248 scholarships.

"These scholarships are sponsored by local business, Jackson organizations, committees, families, individuals and school-related groups and total $118,625 in cash awards," Wheaton said.

She said the money offered by colleges through scholarships and grants is sometimes difficult for guidance counselors to track. However, she said the students provided the counselors with proof of more than 280 scholarship offers which totaled $13.5 million.

"This is a tribute to the quality of students graduating from the Jackson School District," Wheaton said.

And now, she said, administrators are looking ahead at the class of 2012, the ninth-graders who will be entering Jackson Memorial High School and Jackson Liberty High School in September.

As she put it, there are new puzzle pieces to be considered.

"When my son was little and trying to put together his puzzles, I would often hear him pounding on the table, trying to make a piece fit," Wheaton told the board members. "Sometimes schools try to do the same thing to their students. We try to force them into a picture that just doesn't fit. This year we are going to revise that picture for some of our entering ninth-graders."

Wheaton said it is recognized that when students enter high school they are challenged by the many adjustments they have to make, such as 80-minute class periods, final exams, new friends, stricter attendance policies and other challenges.

"To assist the students with these struggles, a new [voluntary] scheduling option is being implemented for the 2008- 09 school year," she said. "This program

was designed to serve ninthgraders and will be at Jackson Memorial and Jackson Liberty."

The new ninth grade academic alternate scheduling program is a combination of the traditional high school setting and will include some modified academic periods.

For the first two periods of the day, students will participate in four 40-minute class periods as opposed to two 80- minute blocks. Students will be assigned to algebra, English and world history classes, plus one period of

study skills designed to support academic and organizational skills.

To ensure that the students share the same experiences as their peers, periods three and four, including lunch, will be offered in 80-minute time slots.

Wheaton said there are 30 students at each high school who have been identified by their counselors as candidates for this program. Parents and students have already received letters inviting them to take part in this option and she said the response has been great.

The team of teachers, counselors and administrators feels very optimistic about the new program, she said.

"The key is offering the assistance proactively as opposed to reactively," Wheaton said. "I look forward to reporting to you next July about our success and revised goals for this program and in July 2012, I will share with you their completed puzzle."

Superintendent of Schools Thomas Gialanella said educators can predict that certain students are not going to complete high school when they enter the ninth grade and these are the students administrators are trying to reach with this program.

He said administrators are trying to do something different with these students and trying to help make them successful.

"I think Mrs. Wheaton has put together a very credible program at no additional cost," the superintendent told the school board.