BY KATHY BARATTA
Staff Writer
Construction materials and tools line the hallways in an addition being built at the Manalapan-Englishtown Middle School, Millhurst Road. When the school was not ready to open on Sept. 11, pupils were sent to elementary schools for half-day sessions. The Manalapan-Englishtown Middle School (MEMS) did not open as scheduled on Sept. 11 and will likely not open until sometime in October, according to a local school official.
Anthony Manisero, president of the Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District Board of Education, said he believes it will be at least three to four weeks before students and staff members will be able to return to the school on Millhurst Road.
MEMS educates 1,400 seventh- and eighth-graders who on Tuesday began attending half-day sessions in the district’s six elementary schools. K-6 pupils in the district began school as scheduled on Sept. 11.
A major construction project at MEMS has not received all necessary inspection approvals and that is keeping the building from being occupied.
PHOTOSBYKATHY BARATTA Statements were made that this is not the time for “fingerpointing or blame” and the only thing that Manisero, Superintendent of Schools Maureen Lally and Manalapan construction code officer and fire official Richard Hogan could agree on last week is that the school did not open on time because it had not received a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy (TCO).
According to Lally and Hogan, the school cannot legally open to staff and students without a TCO, which it did not get due to the inspection failures recorded as part of the renovations and additions that have been under way for more than a year.
In the meantime, MEMS students will be transported to and educated at the district’s elementary schools.
MEMS is divided into communities named for letters in the Greek alphabet. The MEMS students will be transported by their assigned bus to one of the district’s elementary schools for half-day sessions that will not include a lunch period, according to a letter posted on the district’s Internet Web site.
A public meeting was scheduled to be held on the evening of Sept. 11 at the Wemrock Brook School to discuss the issue. That meeting was held after the News Transcript’s press time.
Administrators are asking parents of MEMS pupils not to drive their children to their assigned elementary school.
Elementary school pupils will attend their school for a full day of instruction.
According to the Web site, the MEMS communities will be assigned as follows for the duration of the delayed opening of MEMS: students of the Alpha and Theta communities will attend Taylor Mills School; Beta and Zeta students will attend Wemrock Brook School; Gamma and Kappa students will attend Pine Brook School; Delta students will attend Milford Brook School; Sigma students will attend Clark Mills School; and Omega and Lambda students will attend Lafayette Mills School.
Lally said the sports programs at MEMS will not be affected and that all schedules for the sports program will go on as planned at the school.
According to Hogan, MEMS did not receive a TCO because it failed inspections. Hogan said that the school failed 102 of 283 individual items in inspections that were performed by employees from his department in the week before Labor Day (Sept. 4).
Hogan said the inspection failures were for “all disciplines,” electrical, plumbing, building code and fire safety.
According to Manisero, the school board was not made aware of any problems or possible delay of the school’s opening “until we became involved” on Aug. 31.
When asked if the district had a liaison with Ernest Bock and Sons, general contractors, of Philadelphia, which is doing the work, Manisero said a private consultant, Allen Van Hook, is the district’s point man on the project.
Manisero said, and Lally affirmed, that Van Hook reported regularly to Lally, who had been put in charge of the project for the district.
Manisero had nothing but praise for the work of Bock construction and its willingness to do whatever would be necessary to secure the TCO as soon as possible. He said when board members visited MEMS they were told by Bock’s project managers that everything was proceeding on schedule.
Manisero said it was not until the late evening hours of Sept. 8 that he was made aware by Hogan of the failed construction inspections.
Manisero said that since Lally was in charge of the project she should have been aware of any problems and should have related them to the school board as a whole.
According to Manisero, there is a “failure to communicate” between the board and Lally, who has already informed the board that she will be leaving her position as the district’s superintendent at the end of June 2007.
“There’s not a healthy relationship between the superintendent and the board and because of that there is a failure to communicate and a failure to communicate leads to a breakdown of the system,” Manisero said.
When informed of Manisero’s comments, Lally said she was surprised by them and said she was “focused only on students.”
Lally said she had not been aware of any problems that could have delayed the completion of the work, nor was she aware of the failed inspections until last week. She said she had not been aware of the problems at the time of the Sept. 5 board meeting.
Manisero and Lally said they do not want to point fingers at who may be responsible for the present situation. They said that will be counterproductive and will not help move the project forward to approval and completion.
Lally praised Bock construction and Van Hook. When asked how to account for the failed inspections, Lally said the $17 million renovation and construction project at MEMS had been performed according to plans approved by the state, but that Manalapan, “as is its right as a municipality,” has ordinances and code requirements that are different.
Hogan said his office has approved overtime for employees and will continue to accommodate the needed inspections at MEMS when they are requested. He said his department will remain completely accessible to the construction company and school administrators in order to get the school up to code and eligible for a TCO.
Lally said her office received a 16-point punch list from the township on Sept. 8 of items that needed to be rectified in order for a TCO to be issued. She said crews are working almost around the clock to get the work done.
Lally said the safety and education of the students is her primary concern. She said she wanted MEMS to open as planned while the punch list work was being performed. She said she believed the students could have been isolated from the ongoing work, but she said township officials disagreed with that assessment and would not permit the building to be occupied without a TCO.
The school was occupied during the 2005-06 school year when construction of new classrooms and other improvements was under way.
The $17 million project at MEMS began in March 2005 and was paid for out of a $49 million school bond referendum that was approved by voters in 2003. That referendum is also paying for the construction of an early childhood learning center at the Clark Mills School, Gordons Corner Road.
The end result of the construction at MEMS will include the addition of 73,000 square feet to the existing middle school and 30 new classrooms. There will be a new science room, two new computer labs and the addition of a new gymnasium, health center and nurse’s office, as well as renovated art rooms and a music instruction room.