Looking ahead to 2020, the Delran School District is already at work on large projects to enhance education throughout the schools, especially the high school. Superintendent Brian Brotschul looks forward to providing students with new opportunities.
Delran already is working on the first big project: expansion of the fabrication lab. Last summer, Delran transformed a previously unused space into the current fab lab. Within that space, over a thousand people have been taught how to take ideas and turn them into material items.
Phase two is officially underway as the district breaks through the wall connecting the wood shop and fab lab. The $600,000 project will create a 6,000-square-foot room and allow Delran students to enhance their education.
“The 6,000-square-foot continuous fab lab space is a significant piece of what we’re doing in the district in the area of developing skills for students to utilize in the workforce or future education,” Brotschul noted.
“College and career readiness is a big focus here at Delran and it has been memorialized in our work at the board of education level,” he added. “It’s been our goal for well over five years. This work that we are just getting to at the high school has been from long commitments from the board.
“They support us a lot and the fruit is starting to show in our program with our kids, putting them into a position to be successful.”
The fab lab expansion is not the only project for which Delran is ready. The superintendent and the rest of the education board also want to renovate space for robotics, creating a special education program for students between the ages of 18 and 21. The two projects are big drivers for the 2020-2021 budget.
According to Brotschul, the school district has put major emphasis on mental health and health in general in the new year.
“We do a lot of work at each school and at the district level in the aspect of mental health,” he said. “Students now are experiencing increased stress level and sometimes are engaging in unhealthy choices.
“We’ve been seeing upticks in the students that need additional support. While we deal with each situation on a case-by-case basis, we have a host of community resources to connect kids with what can help them.”
