On Dec. 6, I sat down with Hamilton Township School District interim superintendent James Ficarra at his request to speak about the upcoming school referendum vote.
For more than a half hour, he made a compelling case for approving the $53.7M referendum. The district’s 24 schools had crumbling ceilings, cracking pipes, bowing walls, leaking roofs and windows that could be easily shattered—either by accident or on purpose.
Last year at Lalor Elementary School, Ficarra said, chunks of ceiling fell onto risers where students had been singing just moments before. Ceiling panels fell—and continue to do so—at Sayen Elementary. The auditorium at Steinert High School had to be closed and the school play relocated last spring due to cracks in the ceiling. The examples went on and on.
All this could be fixed, Ficarra said, for an extra $51 per year (or $4.25 per month) for the average Hamilton taxpayer. By the end of our conversation, I was ready to whip out my wallet and give him $51.
But now the planned Jan. 24 vote has been cancelled due to a public notice issue out of the school district’s control. The state dictates when these kinds of special elections can be held, and school board president Tony Celentano told me the district would be hard pressed to get everything in order by the next allowable date, March 14. The next date under consideration isn’t until Sept. 26. And there’s a contingent of board members and members of the public who are pushing to postpone further, until the general election on Nov. 7, in order to save the district the $30,000 it would cost to throw a special election.
Which is it? Either Ficarra has been exaggerating the dire state of the township’s school buildings, or the Board of Education is playing roulette with the well-being of the district’s children by trying to kick the can another nine months down the road. Judging by the pictures Ficarra showed me—and are printed at the front of this month’s issue of the Hamilton Post—I’d say the latter is more likely true.
The institution that is the Hamilton Board of Education has a long history of procrastinating when it comes to big issues. The last time the school board put a referendum up to a public vote was more than nine years ago, in December 2007. Voters overwhelmingly rejected a $81M referendum; they didn’t like the district’s inclusion of funds for a new upper elementary school next to Crockett Middle School and for artificial turf athletic fields at the three high schools. That package included the same repairs that still need to be done today. Eventually, we’re going to pay—figuratively or literally—if we keep pushing them off.
The school district and the current Board of Education must have considered the 2007 failure when assembling the $53.7M package before us now, which includes only necessary work to improve student safety and security. And they should be commended for that.
But the 2017 Board will have plenty on its plate, and you have to wonder what’s going to take precedence. Hamilton Township has been without a full-time superintendent for two years now. Since Neil Bencivengo retired as superintendent in 2011, Hamilton Township School District has spent more time under interim and temporary leadership than it has under a full-time superintendent. Its last full-time hire, James Parla, served just 33 months.
Ficarra, who has been the chief architect and spokesman for this referendum, will be gone in a few weeks. His contract expires at the end of January, and he told me, come February, he plans on taking a long vacation.
The school board has been interviewing candidates for a few months now, and it will have to make a decision on the new school boss soon. That person most likely will need time to get up to speed with everything going on in Hamilton, and it will be up to the Board of Education then—as now—to take charge and lead the district.
If the Board of Education is serious about getting this referendum done, there is another alternative, one that would also save the district money. Mercer County Clerk Paula Sollami Covello told me the district could hold the referendum on June 6, in conjunction with the primary election. It wouldn’t have to foot the bill for a special election, and would have its vote five months earlier than it is proposing currently.
The timing also would allow the district to start work—work the school board and Ficarra have dubbed critical—immediately after the election, since all construction has to be done in the summer when school is not in session. And it avoids a concern the board had with the March date—that the district would have to forfeit its state aid for 2017 if the referendum passed in the spring, due to a quirk in state rules.
A June 6 referendum gives the district more time to get everything in order, and to sell residents on the benefits of the referendum. The district wouldn’t have to wait nearly a full year to hold the vote, while hoping the school buildings hold together long enough to avoid a disaster.
From where I sit, that’s a win-win.
Tiles from the ceiling at Sayen Elementary School in Hamilton Square are falling off, one by one. This is one of many issues the school board wants to fix through a referendum.,
