School district stresses need for new facility
BY ALISON GRANITO
Staff Writer

Millstone

MILLSTONE — No matter what decision voters make later this month, school officials say the district’s need for more classroom space will not disappear.

On Sept. 30, voters will decide whether to approve $39.9 million toward the school district’s plan to build a new middle school and transportation center on the 165-acre Waters property off Baird Road, and renovate the existing middle and elementary schools on Schoolhouse Lane.

The tab for the entire project is projected to be $46.5 million. The state has agreed to fund the remaining $6.6 million.

If the referendum passes, residents will see school taxes increase by 14 cents per $100 of assessed property value. On a home assessed at $400,000, that would translate to an increase of $560 per year.

In recent months, the school board’s plans for the Waters site have drawn opposition from neighboring residents on Waters Lane, Roberts Road and Wagner Farm Lane. The residents have criticized the school board’s plans as being too intense and have specifically taken issue with the planned transportation center, which would house approximately 40 school buses. They say the bus depot does not belong in a residential area.

Whether the municipality has designs on the rest of the Waters property for future municipal use — school officials have said the school board only plans to use 100 of the 165 acres — has also raised concern among area residents.

School officials are preparing for all possibilities, schools Business Administrator Brian Boyle said Monday.

"If the referendum were to fail, the board and the administration would review the whole project and try and determine what caused the failure," he said. "Based on that and an analysis of voting patterns, we’ll decide what to do."

"If [the referendum] gets blown inside out, we’ll have to take a look at why. If it’s a matter of a couple of votes, we may just need to look at distributing information differently the next time," he said.

What is not in question is that there will be a next time, Boyle said.

School officials have said a new middle school is necessary to address burgeoning enrollment. From 460 students in 1990, the district has grown to more than 1,700 students today.

When school opened earlier this month, students were greeted by tempo­rary classrooms housed in trailers outside the main school buildings on Schoolhouse Lane. While the trailers provide a tempo­rary fix, a new school will be a permanent solution, officials have said.

According to Boyle, if voters were to turn down the referendum three times, the board has the option to appeal to the commissioner of the state Department of Education, who can decide to authorize the district to bond the funds for the new school without voter approval.

"The district would get something based on the state minimum standards if the state dictates the project.

"This project meets a whole bunch of needs that might not necessarily get met if we were to go that route," Boyle added.

Officials have noted that state law bars the district from housing students in trailers for more than two years.

If the referendum passes, school offi­cials expect work to begin in the spring of 2004 and hope to have the project com­pleted by September 2006.

School officials pointed to efforts to in­volve the public in the project. Over the past two years, Boyle said residents have been invited to serve on both a strategic planning committee, which concluded that the district needs to build another school, and a referendum planning com­mittee.

"The community was very involved with planning this project. We an­nounced; we advertised it in the newspa­per; those things were all done," Boyle said.

The referendum planning committee, which met three times last winter, in­cluded approximately 100 residents. That committee helped define the scope of the project, Boyle said.

With less than two weeks until voters hit the polls, district officials plan to con­tinue question-and-answer sessions, Boyle said.

Additional presentations are planned for Back to School nights at both schools. Back to School Night at the elementary school is 7 p.m. today, while Back to School Night at the middle school is scheduled for Sept. 25 at 7 p.m.