Child care center to reopen at fire-damaged temple
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Peter Schild of Old Bridge and Allan Greenberg of Highland Park joined other members of the Highland Park Conservative Temple-Congregation Anshe Emeth at an “assembly party” Jan. 24 to put together furniture and equipment for its Above and Beyond Child Care Center, scheduled to reopen Feb. 15.
Photo by Debra Rubin
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February 1, 2010
The day-care center at the Highland Park Conservative Temple-Congregation Anshe Emeth will soon reopen, nearly completing the synagogue’s renewal three-and-a-half years after a fire swept through it.
The Above and Beyond Child Care Center will open its doors on Feb. 15 for babies from six weeks to one year old. The center expects to add a two-year-old class next year, for current children who reenroll and new customers, according to Gittel Footerman, who cochairs the center’s committee with her husband, Justin. She said they hope the center will gradually serve older children through nursery school age, as it had prior to the fire in the summer of 2006.
“We’re not looking to take children from any other facility,” said Footerman. “We also know people don’t like to pull their children out of somewhere else in the middle of the year.”
The center’s opening nearly completes the synagogue’s $4.5 million repair and rebuilding project. A spring dedication is planned.
Footerman showed off the new day-care center wing during a Jan. 24 “assembly party.” Temple volunteers helped assemble furniture and play equipment. Rooms were being readied, waiting for coats of paint and for toys and equipment. Unlike the previous center, which was downstairs in the synagogue building, the “bright, airy” rooms are at ground level, with lots of windows.
The center meets or exceeds state Division of Youth and Family Services standards, “in every area,” said Footerman, including a teacher-to-child ratio above state requirements that will see at least two teachers assigned to each classroom.
The new center will feature a separate kitchen area, changing tables, and separate bathrooms for children and adults. It will have its own separate entrance accessible to parents and staff through a security system that will use a swipe card, said Footerman.
A visual monitoring system will be installed in each classroom enabling parents to watch their children from the center office. Footerman, a retired speech pathologist for the New Brunswick school system, said she thought that was an important feature.
“I’ve seen this throughout my professional career,” she said. “The child sees his mother come into the room and — ‘Waa.’ The mother thinks her child is not happy, when just moments before he was playing and happy.” With the monitoring system, she said, the parents will be able to see the child busy and content.
Those interested in information or enrolling their children should call 732-545-KIDS (5437) or aboveandbeyondkids.com.
Director warms to new role
The Above and Beyond Child Care Center at HPCT-CAE will open in its brand-new space with a brand-new director.
Dr. Lauren Shapiro arrived in New Jersey in late January to take the helm at the center, which will reopen Feb. 15.
“This is my dream job,” said Shapiro, who came to the site Jan. 24 to help assemble furniture and equipment with sons Derek, three; Blake, seven; and Jeremy, 10. “I’ll be able to put my research and teaching experience to work developing this center.”
Shapiro was most recently a professor of child development/family science at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. Previously, she taught at Teachers College at Emporia State University in Kansas and earned a post-doctoral degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill focusing on the development of knowledge and memory.
Shapiro is no stranger to the area, having earned her doctorate in developmental psychology from Rutgers University, while spending four summers working as head teacher at the Creative Nursery School/Day Care Center in Highland Park.
“My research at Rutgers looked at literacy and how children use knowledge in planning and storytelling,” said Shapiro, who grew up in Queens. She also worked in preschools in Ossining and New Rochelle, NY, and taught religious school.
“Lauren is a real find for us,” said Justin Footerman, who cochairs the center’s committee with his wife, Gittel.
Shapiro said one of the first things she did upon arrival was enroll her sons in the religious school at Congregation Neve Shalom in Metuchen, where the family lives.
Four children in Blake’s religious-school class are also in his class at public school. By contrast, Shapiro said, there were only 13 children in the entire religious school in their 40-family congregation in Fargo, ND.
“I came here not only because I have family here, but I also wanted to bring Jewish experiences to my children,” she said. “In the Midwest, there were not that many opportunities for them to develop a Jewish identity, and I was continually reminding their teachers there is supposed to be a separation of church and state and they should not be bringing in Christian beliefs in school. I know that’s not going to happen in the East.”
— DEBRA RUBIN
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