Dr. Holly Bush is Gateway’s 2011-12 Teacher of the Year

Dr. Holly Bush, a middle school Science teacher at Gateway, was selected as Teacher of the Year for the 2011-12 school year.  In her 11 years at Gateway, Dr. Bush has been teaching middle school students to go beyond their comfort zones and reach for the stars in their resource science classes.  She also works with Mrs. Bette McMahon, teaching exploratory Spanish classes to resource students.

Dr. Bush has the distinctive ability to recognize and appreciate the uniqueness of each of her students and she incorporates it into the daily interactions with her classes.  One of her favorite things about teaching is how varied and unpredictable the days are.

No matter how many hours she spends planning and preparing for lessons, no two classes or lessons are alike.  Dr. Bush believes that Socrates, who declared “I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think,” said it best in summing up the teaching experience.

When not teaching, Dr. Bush serves on the Board of Directors at EIRC (Educational Information and Resource Center), an educational agency that services parents, students, schools and communities.  She enjoys cooking, entertaining and spending quality time with her family when she is not stimulating young minds at Gateway.


The Gateway community congratulates Dr. Holly Bush, Gateway’s 2011-12 Teacher of the Year.

A Letter from the Superintendent:

Dear Community Members,

The Gateway Regional Board of Education prepared the 2012-2013 school budget with a deep awareness of its impact on our communities.

While the state permitted districts to increase the budget by as much as 2%, the Gateway Board made a conscious decision to stay below that figure.  The 2012-2013 budget only increases 1.4% yet maintains all of our existing academic, sports, and student activity programs and adds the following much-needed items:

• Technology
• Updated network and wireless capabilities, enabling students to use their own laptops, tablets and other devices in school
• A new social studies teacher to meet core curriculum content standards and personal finance requirement
• Continued facility improvements:
• Upgrades to the media center
• Refinishing the gym floors
• Replacing/refurbishing equipment (risers, wheelchair bus,
  softball backstops, outside stadium scoreboard, etc.)     

 

Additionally, in our ongoing effort to reduce unnecessary spending and explore new sources of revenue, our 2012-2013 budget supports the following cost-saving and revenue-generating programs (the Gateway Group continues to receive state recognition for our many successful shared services programs):

• Shared superintendent and administrative services among Gateway, Westville and National Park
• Shared business services to National Park, Westville and Woodbury Heights Districts
• Shared Child Study Team services with all elementary sending districts
• Curriculum Consortium with Westville, Wenonah, National Park and Woodbury Heights for curriculum services, sharing coordinator and clerical staff
• Shared transportation and food service
• Race To The Top (RTTT) – We applied for a grant to offset costs of the new, state teacher evaluation program (EE4NJ).
• School Choice – We continue to attract pupils from towns outside the Gateway Group, increasing revenue by $126,506 to our district in 2011-12 and $223,311 in 2012-13.

 

On January 17, 2012, the Governor signed into law A-4394/S-3148, which established procedures for moving the date of the school district annual election from April to November and eliminating the annual voter referendum on the school budget as long as it does not exceed the state-imposed 2% cap on budget increases. In February, the Board passed a resolution to change the annual election date for Gateway school board members to November with the belief that more citizens will participate in the election process and that the higher level of participation will foster positive interest in our pubic schools.  Current Board members will continue to serve in office until the January 2013 reorganization meeting.

 

Although our communities will not be voting on the 2012-2013 budget, we will be happy to answer any questions you may have. Please feel free to contact our School Business Administrator, Donna Contrevo, with your concerns at 848- 8203.

As always, we appreciate your support and want you to know that we are working hard to use your tax dollars responsibly while making Gateway the very best it can be.

Sincerely,

Superintendent