communication with entire committee valuable
School official says
communication with entire committee valuable
By alison granito
Staff Writer
MILLSTONE — With overcrowding in the schools prompting the school district to plan a referendum to build a new school, keeping the lines of communication open between the Board of Education and Township Committee will be key this year.
With that in mind, one resident asked the Township Committee to consider reinstating the position of liaison to the school board. The position was eliminated under the previous administration.
Currently, school board officials are slated to attend the second committee meeting of each month to update the full committee on school board business.
Under the previous liaison system, one designated member of the governing body attended school board meetings and reported back to the committee.
Resident Daru Sharp cited problems caused by the growing enrollment in the school district, which has caused severe overcrowding at the elementary and middle schools.
She said that bringing back the liaison position would be a good way to increase the communication with the school district and keep the committee informed of how overcrowding is affecting the school district.
According to figures provided previously by the school district, Millstone’s K-8 enrollment has nearly quadrupled, jumping from 490 in 1990 to approximately 1,600 today. As a stopgap measure to address the burgeoning enrollment, the school district expects to place three trailer classrooms outside the school building next year at both schools. That number is expected to jump to six trailers at each site by 2006, the earliest that school officials expect to be able to complete construction of a new school.
"I don’t know how Millstone is going to deal with overcrowding in the schools if we don’t slow down development," Sharp said.
Mayor William Nurko told Sharp that "every committeeman has the same concern." He added that slowing down development was a complicated process and was "not going to happen overnight."
Sharp noted that the school board cannot address the problems of overcrowding in the schools on its own since they have no control over development in the township.
Committeeman John Pfefferkorn volunteered for the liaison position if the committee decided to bring back the post.
School Board President Linda O’Reilly said that although both the current arrangement and the previous liaison system have advantages, she thinks that ability to address the committee as a whole once an month leads to better communication.
"If I had my preference, I would keep it this way," she said.
O’Reilly cited the committee’s recent decision to provide the school board with up to $6 million in aid toward the purchase of property on which the school district could build a new middle school.
"I don’t think we could have ever gotten as far as we did with the land issues if we did not meet with the whole committee. Everybody got to hear the ins and outs," she said.
"We need to hear from their side what they can and cannot do, and they need to hear from us what we can and cannot do," she said, noting that addressing the governing body as a whole eliminated the break downs in communication.