Welcome! John F. Kennedy School

Name: John F. Kennedy Elementary School
Superintendent: Dr. Gail Verona
Principal: Mr. Albert Perno
Address: 28 Front Street
Main Office: 732-521-0400
Fax: 732-605-0571
Nurse: Pat Dufty
Nurse's Number: 732-656-9140
School Hours: 8:30 A.M. - 2:45 P.M.
Serving Students: Grades PreK - 5
Current Enrollment: 440
Year Built: 1959
Additions: 1997

The John F. Kennedy Elementary School, formally known as School No. 3, was built in 1959 to help accommodate the high number of students attending Jamesburg's Schools. School No. 3 was built on a large area of land on the corners of Front Street and Davison Avenue. The school would be on the same block of land the Jamesburg High School was built on. (The Jamesburg High School closed in 1979 due to low enrollment.) The two schools would share the athletic field that separated them.

The spacious new School No. 3 had a small gymnasium, fourteen classrooms, two small instructional rooms, a teachers lounge, nurse's office, main office, and principal's office. After John F. Kennedy's death, the school was renamed the John F. Kennedy School.

In the late 1960's there was still need for more space and seven relocatable trailers were set up directly behind the school. In 1979, the Jamesburg PTA established a library at JFK. In the early 1980's, Apple computers were bought and a computer lab was established. As time wore on, so did the relocatables. They were slowly rotting away showing the effects of thirty years!

In 1993, talks went under way for a referendum to expand the John F. Kennedy School to meet its current needs. We worked with town officals, architects, the Board of Education, PTA, teachers, school staff, residents, and many other hardworking, devoted individuals. In May of 1995, after a long, hard year of campaigning, talking, and working, the Borough of Jamesburg passed a $5.9 million referendum to expand and renovate the John F. Kennedy School.

The new addition would give the school a media center, kitchen, two small group instructional rooms, a science lab, a computer lab, a teachers' preparation room, a full size multi-purpose room, an office for the district's child study team, and fourteen new classrooms.

Ground was broken for the expansion on December 6, 1996 and the new addition was dedicated on Sunday, March 29, 1998, at 4:30 P.M. The ceremony was composed of many speeches by principals, board members, and individuals who devoted a lot of time and effort to the project. The band and chorus also played a few musical selections. Our library is dedicated in loving memory to a devoted fourth grade teacher and friend, Mrs. Suzanne Graham. The story time area located within the library is dedicated in loving memory of Mrs. Janice Kalmikoff, a devoted parent who helped in the effort to make the John F. Kennedy School expansion possible. The computer lab is dedicated to Mr. Joseph Giaconne, who perished in the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center. He was influential in beginning our school computer networks and Internet.

The John F. Kennedy School came a long way to be what it is today, and would not have been possible without the generosity of the residents of this great Borough of Jamesburg, New Jersey.

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Welcome! John F. Kennedy School

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