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A year and a half into is tenure, School Superintendent Lamont Repollet says student are responding to the initiatives and programs aimed at pivoting students onto a road to success.

Prior to his arrival here, Asbury Park School District employed five superintendents in 7 years. With his 5-year contract, Repollet said he hopes to change the conversation in and around Asbury Park’s schools in order to help the students rise to their full potential.

The district has, in general, received negative media coverage while there are many positive things happening within the schools.  Repollet said.

“They talk about our low graduation rates, they talk about how our students can’t read,” he said “They talk about how dysfunctional our board is. They talk about those issues.”

But Repollet remains optimistic. He said looking at how the east side’s waterfront development and business growth has put Asbury Park back in the national spotlight, he set off with a goal apply that synergy to education.

“If the school district can be the beacon of our community, then I think that could be something great,” he said.

When Repollet began 18 months ago, he did so with a hard had and edict to ‘Build a Brighter Future.’

Calling himself the Chief architect, Repollet established what he calls action pillars – “rebuild the academic foundation, retool the capacity to educate our kids and restore the pride and faith that this community has in our school district.”

Maya Angelou’s ‘Still I Rise’ was embraced as the anecdotal Phoenix rising charge.

“We have to change people’s perception of our school district,” Repollet said. “The media is powerful and they put out all this negative stuff about us. We have to put more light out there and the light is not me, it’s not the board – the light is the kids.”

At city churches, business community meetings, state and national board workshops and educational seminars, Repollet is spreading the message – Asbury Park students are worth the investment.

“I can’t fix anything to save my life but I can educate kids, I can work with kids,” he told the Asbury Park Neptune Minister’s Alliance during their meeting last week at Mt. Carmel Baptist Church on Ridge Avenue in Neptune City.

In the past year alone, the high school students have successfully participated in science fairs, college tours, internship programs, and won top placements at the national Harvard University Debate challenge.

The defunct Parent’s Center reopened with a goal of providing parents the tools and resources to not only support their children but advance their goals, and a Maker’s Room featuring cutting edge technology, programs, and games was opened as an incentive to the reward based initiatives.

“We are going to educate the kids and we are going to educate the parents at the same time,” Repollet said. “The goal is that once they see what we call that cultural mind shift, the light of embracing that brighter future becomes infectious.”

The College and Career Readiness program established last year’s paid summer internships at local businesses and currently 15 students are going through the Salt School training program provided by The Asbury hotel’s David Bowd.

Set to open in May, the 110-room boutique hotel is located at the former Salvation Army site on Fifth Avenue. Bowd offered gratis a 10-week workforce development training program.

While an initial five slots were reserved for Asbury’s high school students, the district was able to negotiate 15, with 5 full-time slots reserved for the 18 year-olds and the remaining part-time posts for sophomores and juniors.

“We want them to learn a skill so they can go and work and have a trade,” Repollet said.

Last month, Repollet and his academic supervisors unveiled two new initiatives:

The Dream Scholar Program is a 6^th to 8^th grade honors track curriculum aimed at keeping students in district during their high school years.

And, the Dream Academy offers a select number of 8^th grade students the opportunity to embark on a co-curriculum program that will enable them to take college courses alongside their high school courses.

“They will graduate with an associate’s degree and a high school diploma,” Repollet said.

In taking on faculty development, Repollet said it was important to bring in resources and tools to help educators successfully reach their goals.

“We partner with HMH Scholastic to offer leadership development,” Repollet said. “Our teachers have executive leadership coaches to help them grow from being building mangers to educating our kids.”

With all that said, Repollet maintains that the district has yet to accomplish anything.

“What you’ve seen is movement,” he said. “We’ve been landlocked for years, we’ve been stuck. But what we are doing right now is moving this boat out of this port in order to position ourselves to build a brighter future.”

Having spent his first 18 months assessing and creating a strategic action plan and establishing stakeholders, it’s time for action, he said.

“This year I’m retooling,” Repollet said. “We are implementing in small doses. There is no execution yet because you don’t execute until you become proficient in something. I’m not even there yet – I’m still creating.

“What I’m doing now is increasing our stamina to teach, to learn, and teaching our kids how to act and how to behave,” he said.

The upcoming school year “will be the execution because I’ve given you the tools you will need,” Repollet said. “I’ve taught you how to use those tools and now I’m going to let you go. I will check for understanding and I’m going to make sure you are doing your job and then I will assess – It’s called data driven decision.”

“I’ll create based off of what we have done,” he said. “Instead of having 75 percent of our kids not reading at grade level, by next year, our records show we will be at 50 percent.”

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