Author: Melanie Burney

Incoming state-appointed Camden school superintendent Alfonso Q. Llano Jr. got a head start Wednesday on his new position running the troubled school system.

Llano met with Camden Mayor Victor Carstarphen and other key stakeholders at City Hall for a congenial discussion ahead of taking over the district March 1. .

During a round-table discussion, Llano said his immediate priority will be to provide stability to the district. Camden has been without a permanent superintendent since June 30.

Llano,currently the school superintendent in the Vineland district, inherits a district of about 5,532 students plagued with declining enrollment, law test scores, chronic absenteeism and a high dropout rate.There have been modest gains since the state seized control of the district in 2013.

The incoming district leader said it was too early to comment on the district’s budget outlook for the 2026-2027 school year. Last year, the district had a $91 million budget deficit and made cuts affecting nearly 300 positions.

Llano said he was made aware of recent rumors about possible school closures. He said he had not received data about it and declined further comment.

In response to another question, he said he would support immigrant families who have grown increasingly afraid to send their children to school because they fear they may be targeted by ICE. About 56% of Camden’s traditional public school students are Hispanic.

“Schools are a safe place and we want to maintain them as a safe place,” Llano said.

He delicately side-stepped a question about the changing educational landscape in Camden. Thousands of students have left the city’s traditional public schools for Renaissance and charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run.

Enrollment in the Renaissance and charter schools exceeds the traditional public schools. The district has said payments to those schools have increased from $54.9 million in 2013 to $198 million.

“School choice is important to families. Camden is unique” Llano said. “We want to make sure the public school system is stabilized and innovative in a way that families feel comfortable keeping their children in the public school system.”

Llano said he would focus on listening and learning from educators and the community as his introduction to Camden.

“What does the reality look like? What is every day in the classroom?” he said.

Llano has been making his rounds in Camden. He was in the city Monday and joined Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service activities.

Llano said he was proud to become the first Hispanic tapped to lead the district. He is among only a handful of outsiders to become the city’s schools chief.

Llano will receive an annual salary of $260,000 under a three-year contract, making him among the highest paid superintendents in Burlington, Camden and Gloucester Counties.

He succeeds Davida Coe-Brockington, a longtime Camden educator who has served as the interim superintendent during a national search. She was not a candidate for the job.

Coe-Brockington, who will continue as interim chief until Llano arrives, said she was “honored to hold it down” until a permanent superintendent was named. She thanked Llano “for saying yes to Camden.”

Carstarphen and a group of city leaders cleared the path for the state to appoint a new superintendent. Katrina McComb’s contract was not renewed last year after The group said Camden schools needed “a new vision for leadership.”

Llano has been superintendent of the Vineland district in Cumberland County since 2021. He previously worked in the Trenton, Readington Township and Howell Township school districts.

Science teacher Michael Green wasn’t sure how his students would feel about the new assignment. Growing mushrooms for South Jersey restaurants had, after all, never been in his curriculum before.

They loved it, and three years later, the operation at Rancocas Valley Regional High School in Mount Holly is thriving. The project produces more than 1,000 pounds of mushroom varieties annually.

“It’s super fun,” said sophomore Lilly Sell, 16, an aspiring pediatric nurse or welder. “You don’t really get bored.”

In the classroom, Green teaches students in his biology and environmental science classes the fundamentals of a mushroom, the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus. They learn about genetics, cell division, and the growing process.

“My goal is to do real science,” Green said.

Students are also learning about the farm-to-table movement by selling the harvest to local eateries and public service by donating mushrooms to a nearby soup kitchen and serving meals to the less fortunate.

Outside, the students get hands-on mushroom harvesting experience inside a greenhouse located behind the annex that houses the RV PREP (Personalized Readiness and Education Program). There are also coops on the property for about 19 chickens and a handful of quail also tended by students.

The student mushroom farmers harvest edible fungi varieties such as lion’s mane, blue oyster, chestnut, black pearl oyster, comb tooth, and shiitake. Their produce has become part of the supply chain for several nearby restaurants and the students’ own families, who are gifted the fungi.

Green said the operation began several years ago, when the Mycopolitan Mushroom Co. in Philadelphia was looking for a way to get rid of waste — the blocks of mycelium-laced agricultural waste where mushrooms grow. They forged a partnership and Green agreed to regularly pick up a truckload.

Three weeks after Green picked up the first load of blocks in 2022, students harvested about 20 to 30 pounds of mushrooms. The operation has grown steadily since then, Green said.

The blocks are stored in plastic bags on shelves in the greenhouse, which is temperature-controlled for the best growing conditions. After a few weeks, the bags are cut open to let in oxygen to grow the mushrooms.

Green said the blocks sit in the greenhouse in a fruiting chamber during the pinning, or growing, period. Each load of blocks yields about 200 bags of edible mushrooms, he said.

The bulk of the harvest is sold wholesale to the Robin’s Nest restaurant in Mount Holly and the Vincentown Diner in Southampton Township, Green said.

The classroom-to-table operation has been profitable for the school. It generates about $7,000 annually, which is reinvested in the school’s environmental science and biology programs, Green said.

“We use a ton of mushrooms at the restaurant,” said Robin Winzinger, who runs the family-owned Robin’s Nest. “The quality of their mushrooms are fantastic, really top-notch.”

The mushrooms are featured on the menu as “RV mushrooms,” said Winzinger, a culinary chef. They are used in the restaurant’s wild mushroom soup, quiche, and risotto, among other dishes, she said.

The school also donates about three pounds weekly to the First Presbyterian Church in Mount Holly for its community lunch program, said Jan Delgado, the director. The program serves about 300 free meals twice a week.

Delgado said the program’s chef prepares the mushrooms as a side dish sauteed with herbs. The church would not be able to offer the dish otherwise, she said.

“It’s strictly a delicacy that we are able to serve because of the school,” Delgado said. “We would never purchase mushrooms — that would be too expensive.”

Students occasionally volunteer at the church to help serve the meals prepared with the fungi — an experience Sell described as “heart-warming.”

“They love the mushrooms,” Sell said. “They go through the pans in seconds.”

After donning plastic gloves, Sell and classmate Jordan Griffin, 18, a senior, stepped into the humid greenhouse on a recent morning to inspect the latest batch of shrooms.

They pointed out different mushroom varieties that typically grow from October to March or April. Students in the school’s Environmental Club also assist with harvesting after school.

Griffin, who plans to attend a trade school to study welding or HVAC repair, said the hands-on experience piqued his interest. He’s not too fond of sampling mushroom dishes, however.

“I’m not the biggest fan of them,” Griffin said. “I won’t go crazy over them.”

Green has asked Winzinger to conduct cooking demonstrations in class, hoping to whet students’ appetites with dishes like chicken mushroom Alfredo and mushroom soup.

“I don’t know how many students would want to eat a mushroom entree,” Green said.

Sell said that while she is no fungi fanatic, she enjoys her mother’s mushrooms sauteed with garlic butter.

“There are many ways to make it to your taste,” she said.

After opening the plastic bags, Griffin and Sell carefully cut a small harvest and packaged the mushrooms in brown paper bags. The bags would be offered that day free to students and staff.

After harvest, the spent mushroom blocks are composted on site and applied to the school’s Outdoor Learning space, which includes fruit trees, rain gardens, vegetable plants, and honeybees.

Green said most of the mushrooms are harvested in bigger quantities and sold to the local restaurants. Whatever is left over is given to the community, he said.

“My goal is just to get the mushrooms out,” Green said. “The goal is to get mushrooms into people’s hands.”

Students also get to take home the chicken eggs, Green said. The quail have yet to produce any eggs, he said.

“Those are a hot commodity,” he said.