While the West Windsor-Plainsboro school district is emphasizing the positive with its future $25 million referendum, saying it won’t increase taxes, some residents are not buying the rhetoric.##M:[more]##
“I am at a loss,” says Raymond Ryan, a resident of West Windsor and a member of the Village Grande Association, an influential area watchdog group. “The district is losing a lot of its credibility by the way it is handling this.”
Next year area taxpayers will decide whether it’s thumbs up or down on the $25.195 million capital improvements referendum to address some long neglected needs in district buildings.
“We will not see an increase in debt,” says Board President Hemant Marathe. “We will extend the maturity of the bond rather than borrow more money and we don’t expect to see extra taxes.”
Marathe is referring to the fortuitous retirement of two earlier bonds this fall: the 1986 building of Community Middle School and the 1988 bonds for Millstone River School.
The cost to taxpayers for the $25 million referendum will fit neatly into costs of the earlier bonds. So while taxes will not go up for WW-P homeowners, nor will they go down the way they would have without the increased debt.
“Residents have been very supportive of the district, approving the last several budgets without a problem,” says Ryan. “But when they have the opportunity to help residents out (and lower taxes) they take on new debt and keep taxes high.”
In a letter to the editor, Ryan writes, “When I moved here in 1999 my school taxes were $2,”779 a year. Last year I paid $4,”429, a 59 percent increase over five years. This is a time frame in which the school population remained relatively stable and inflation was under control.”
Ryan continues, “I’m concerned that our school board, including [Richard] Kaye [a school board member from West Windsor and a member of the Village Grande Association], need to visit their dictionaries and get some help in understanding the difference between a need and a want.”
Among the items that will be covered by the referendum are a $7.6 million performing arts center at High School South and $2.1 million for an additional six classrooms at the Dutch Neck Elementary School. High School South will receive almost $19 million, including $100,”000 for open area renovation, $280,”000 for paving repair, and $100,”000 for expansion of the parking lots. Dutch Neck School costs will total just over $4 million.
In addition to the $25 million referendum, the board will also present a second question to the public in hopes of raising the total available for capital improvements by $2.3 million ($1.15 million each) to install synthetic turf fields at High School North and High School South. Voters will have an opportunity to vote on both the referendum and the second question as separate items.
District officials are also stressing that the state is expected to contribute 40 percent of the cost of the capital projects, but are not counting on it. “There has some indication that the state funds are on the verge of drying up,” says Liyou Yang, board member from Plainsboro.
When the public will vote on the referendum is yet to be determined, though it will certainly be sometime between the December holiday season and the budget vote in April. “Deciding when to have the vote is a very important part of the process,” says Plainsboro board member Henry Wieck. “There never really is a good time to ask people for money.”
New Jersey school districts are only allowed to have such votes on a limited number of specific dates during the school year. Although school officials say that January 24, 2006 is the likeliest date for the vote, March 14 is also a possibility. While April 18 would be the next available vote date, it is highly unlikely because that is the day voters decide the fate of the 2006-’07 school budget as well as three board members.
Middle School Changes
While the summertime is a slow time for changes in program, the West Windsor-Plainsboro school board is tackling portions of its Middle School Program reform. At the July 12 meeting there was discussion of the possibility of bringing in a scheduling consultant in the fall to help ameliorate the controversial program.
This past spring a Middle School study committee comprised of group of teachers, administrators, students, and parents took a look at the program and came up with a host of recommendations.
“What we found is that we have a good program and we are striving to make it better,” says Plainsboro board member Henry Wieck.
Both WW-P middle schools — Grover Middle School and Community Middle School — are among the top-rated in the state, but the middle school program is not without its controversies.
One central complaint for many parents, students, and teachers has been the change in the the middle school schedule (lengthened two years ago) that imposed the LCA (Literacy in the Content Area) and the lack of study hall time.
Consequently, in the fall of 2004, the board decided to form a committee to embark on a comprehensive study of the entire middle school program and come up with a series of recommendations for improvement.
The committee — composed of teachers, school administrators, supervisors, parents, and students — presented its recommendations in a report at the board in May. Since then the district has been studying ways to enact the recommendations.
Among the recommendations: the need to maintain high expectations while meeting the developmentally appropriate needs of all students; daily morning meetings; a system for students to enter the building early to access resources; and to provide consistent and coherent professional development for all support staff, teachers, other professionals and administrators, which includes instructional strategies, curriculum articulation and integration, and teaming strategies.
But tops on the list of recommendations for many will be replacing the LCA program with the Academic Extension Period, to begin this September.
When the LCA program was approved in 2003 as a pilot program for a trial run in the two middle schools, it was endorsed as an innovative means to combine reading skills into core subject areas like math, science, and social studies. But problems soon erupted.
LCA is meant to continue support services for some of the neediest students — supplemental instruction, math lab, literacy lab, and the PRISM program — as well as provide additional support for every student.
Part of its appeal, seen as a problem by some teachers and parents, is that it uses up time that had been devoted to study hall and minutes that would have been used to pass between classes, via the longer school schedule. It also allows for longer math and science classes.
At the July 12 meeting the board did approve two initiatives. One will be a continuation of last year’s start of a three-year plan for the Reading & Writing Project Network training through Columbia University for a cost of approximately $78,”800. The contract will cover consultant work days and travel expenses.
The board also approved Year 2 of a three-year plan for professional development services for the 2005-’06 school year related to differentiated instruction at a cost of $35,”000.
