LIS expansion, roofs would be included.
By: Lea Kahn
Faced with overcrowding at the Lawrence Intermediate School and the need to replace the roofs on three buildings, school district officials are considering a referendum to pay for the projects but not for at least two years from now.
The Lawrence Township Board of Education learned last fall that LIS, which houses grades 4-6, is dangerously close to becoming overcrowded, Schools Superintendent Max Riley said.
The school district’s demographer predicted that enrollment at LIS will reach 1,000 students by the 2007-08 school year, Dr. Riley said. The school, which has a capacity of 988 students, enrolls about 900 students now.
The school board, meanwhile, has not decided whether it will go forward with a referendum to address overcrowding at LIS, he said. For one, there is nowhere to expand on the school grounds.
"It will be very difficult to put 1,000 children in LIS that’s what captured the school board’s attention," Dr. Riley said. "There are 900 students now. Add another 100 students to a building that is already bulging at the seams, and you have to start to think about it."
The other thing that caught the school board’s attention is the fact that the district has to do a better job in developing a long-range facilities maintenance program, Dr. Riley said.
Virtually all of the roofs on the seven school buildings have begun to fail over the last three years, he said. The roofs at the Ben Franklin Elementary School and the Lawrence Middle School have been replaced, and the LIS roof is slated for replacement this summer.
But the roofs at the Eldridge Park and Slackwood elementary schools and Lawrence High School need to be replaced, he said. The Lawrenceville Elementary School will need a new roof in a couple of years.
In the past, the school district relied on periodic bond referendums to pay for such work, he said. Lately, the district has put aside money in the budget to cover the costs but recent changes in state law have limited a district’s ability to do so.
One possibility is a small referendum with enough money to pay for the new roofs, but the school board has not really discussed it, Dr. Riley said. The other possibility but not a very likely one is to include it in the school district’s budget. It would require cutting the budget, forcing a decision between teachers and maintenance, he said.
And changes in the state budget law have eliminated the possibility of including a new roof on a so-called second question at the annual school board election, Dr. Riley said.
The April elections allow voters to select school board members and to vote on the tax levy to support the operating budget. In the past, school districts could put a second question on the ballot to seek voter approval to spend additional money for specific projects.
Dr. Riley said he does not foresee a referendum question before the voters until at least the 2006-07 school year. The district is currently engaged in a major renovation and expansion project at Lawrence High School, which is expected to absorb a great deal of time and attention in the next year or two, he said.

