RELEASE October 15, 2002

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The New Jersey Child Care Advisory Council (CCAC) will honor Bloomfield child care expert, Marcia Schoolmaster, at its Eighth Annual Aletha Wright Award Luncheon on Wednesday, October 16, 2002, at the Marriott Lafayette Yard Conference Hotel in Trenton.

The CCAC will present her a gift book called "In Celebration Of… Marcia Schoolmaster – Aletha Wright Recipient." The Awards Luncheon was established to coincide with the CCAC’s annual meeting and to honor the late Aletha Wright, who was Director of the Office of Child Care Development at the Department of Human Services, as well as a Camden County Freeholder, at the time of her death in 1994.

True to her "name", Schoolmaster has spent her professional life educating young children. She began her career teaching kindergarten in Solon, Ohio in 1958. When her own children were small, she was a parent and occasional substitute teacher at Montclair Cooperative Nursery School, then taught and was Director at Watchung Cooperative Nursery School for eleven years.

She has been the Head Teacher of an infant-toddler program, director of a Montessori School, and an instructor at Montclair State. She was Director of Tri-City Child Care Center in Newark and a Senior Program Analyst for the Newark Office on Children. For the past six years she has worked for Programs for Parents, Inc. as the Child Care Action Director, and most recently as a Consulting Director.

She has served on the NJ CCAC, is past chair of the NJ Policy Development Board and the Essex-Hudson Association for the Education of Young Children (AEYC). She co-chairs the Articulation Committee of the NJ Professional Development Center for Early Care and Education.

Schoolmaster is also an original board member of First Books, a Washington-based national early literacy program that provides books to children of low-income families. As a leader in this program, she identifies families and programs in Essex County where books may be distributed… some 75,000 to date.

The NJCCAC annual meeting will be from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The Luncheon is from 1 to 3 p.m. The Marriott Lafayette Yard Conference Hotel is located at 1 West Lafayette Street, near South Warren Street, in Trenton.

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