While Plainsboro Township has been one of the municipalities taking advantage of a new state law that would allow the payments on state-mandated pension costs to be deferred until 2012, the school board, like West Windsor, has opted out of deferring.##M:[more]##
During the board’s meeting on April 21, the school board passed a resolution rejecting the offer of a deferral by the New Jersey Public Employees Retirement System for the 2008-’09 school year, which is approximately $527,”488.93.
The legislation gives the board two options — to either pay that amount in full by Thursday, April 30, or defer one-half of the payment until April, 2012, at which time the board would continue to repay the amount over the following 15 years. The deferred payments would have been subject to an interest rate of 8.25 percent.
In other business during the meeting, the board approved hiring Andrea Trainer as a consultant of professional development related to improving minority achievement for $500. “It is our determination to say other districts across the nation face the same gap, but it’s not acceptable to us,” and the board is trying to work towards improving the situation, said board member Richard Kaye, who sits on the board’s curriculum committee.
Also in other business during the meeting, board member Ellen Walsh, who sits on the administration and facilities committee, reported that the referendum projects at the high schools were 95 percent complete, with outside site work currently being completed.
The first phase of construction, which included rehabilitation to the modular units at J.V.B. Wicoff and Maurice Hawk elementary schools, was completed in September, 2006, and phase two, which included a six-classroom addition at Dutch Neck Elementary, was completed in October, 2007. Work on the track and football field at High School South, which was a second question on the referendum ballot, was completed in time for the start of the 2007-’08 school year.
Some of the construction work at South, the remaining phase, was originally slated to begin in March of this year, but actually began in October, 2007, and because of that, things were able to move a lot more quickly. The renovations to South include placing partitions in the open space classroom areas, adding a new performing arts center/auditorium and a new gymnasium and auxiliary gym. The current gym has been converted into four new classrooms.
The third phase of the project also included minor changes to High School North — where one room was changed into a science room — and renovations to South’s music and art rooms.
The project also included replacing the bubble over High School South’s swimming pool, which has been taken down, and the installation of the new bubble is scheduled to be completed by the end of June, Walsh said. The bubble over South’s pool — an air-supported structure which is similar to a giant tarp that supported by air — needed to be replaced. The former bubble is the third the district has had, and most bubbles have a lifespan of only 10 years. Each summer, the tarp is removed, and from October to May every year, it is back up.
The board ran into issues with the state’s interpretation of the definition of a temporary structure, which the school district believed the bubble was. This is simply because it is taken down for months during the warmer weather. Whether it should be considered a new structure, or a rehabilitation of a current one, was at issue. The state, in its feedback to the district, called for sprinkler lines inside the bubble. But officials argued that because it is an air-supported structure, it could not support a sprinkler line. The state ultimately decided that a bubble is no longer a bubble, and that it had to meet additional rules. That has added to the costs.
