Director Retiring as Adult School Set to Shut Doors

Sandra (“Sandy”) Hockridge, who will retire after 26 years as Watchung Hills Regional High School’s Adult School director/administrator, has compared her position to that of an artist who is faced with a huge, blank canvas that has to be filled in with all kinds of themes, colors, motifs. Every year a new canvas must be filled in, yielding to the tastes, preferences and needs of the viewers.

It is a task Hockridge has successfully completed for almost three decades.

“I’ve enjoyed my run here: the environment, the energy, the supportive administration, the cooperation and help of the Buildings & Grounds people.  I think I’ve given a lot, but I’ve gotten a lot back," Hockridge said.

However, as Hockridge steps away, the Adult School itself is set to close.

Something for all Tastes

Hockridge, a Douglass College graduate, has directed the Adult School since 1989.

In that era, a school for adult learners was a popular, and perhaps even necessary, public service. In its heyday, for example, in November of 1986, the Watchung Hills Adult School offered some 140 courses, employing 130 teachers who served an enrollment of about 2,000 students. 

The Watchung Hills Adult School, says North Plainfield resident Hockridge, was unlike many others such educational opportunities. It was under the aegis of the Watchung Hills Regional High School Board of Education, rather than serving as an independent unit (as was the case with many other such schools).

When it was organized in 1958, more than 200 persons were present to discuss, suggest and give support to the endeavor. A year later, a 13-member Adult Advisory Council was formed. Service club, social groups, welfare agencies, industries were asked to share in establishing the offerings of the Adult School, and, in the fall of 1959, the first session of the Watchung Hills Adult School was held.

While the Board of Education was the ultimate decision-maker, says Hockridge, the Watchung Hills Adult School Advisory Committee, composed of lay persons in the sending community, was essentially the group that kept the school on its feet and running. 

How to fill in that blank canvas? Hockridge was always on the alert for interesting, useful, innovative course possibilities. Although many of the school’s offerings were more or less of the “standard,” must-include, variety, Hockridge was able to devise a curriculum that included something for all tastes and needs. Networking, news articles, teachers’ tips helped provide the source in keeping the adult school’s offerings timely, lively, basic, appealing.

Decline in Enrollment

Even so, the downturn in enrollments over the years was of concern. Once popular, day trips to such places as art museums, Broadway shows, horticultural displays (such as Longwood Gardens), educational institutions (such as the Culinary Institute) were no longer drawing the crowds they once did. Increasing numbers of women in the work force (and women adult school attendees were in the majority) the competition from other venues, and even the shadow of 9/11, contributed to the decline of the adult school.

Now, for a combination of reasons, and over half a century of providing after-hours educational and recreational opportunities for the community, the Watchung Hills Adult School will close its doors. School officials have been negotiating with the Somerset Hills YMCA on some programs, but no agreements have been finalized yet.

Hockridge says she could not have served so long in her various capacities as adult school supervisor had it not been for the dedicated Adult School Advisory Council whose members helped plan, develop and evaluate the curriculum, volunteer-leaders such as: Cecilia Cilli, Mildred Flanagan and Lynn Combs of Long Hill Township, Barbara Vitarius  and Ruth Rovtar of Watchung.

All of them, along with Hockridge, will be honored for their long, loyal and enthusiastic support at the May 20th meeting of the Watchung Hills Regional High School Board of Education meeting.