BY JANE MEGGITT
Staff Writer
ALLENTOWN – Although construction was supposed to start on the Upper Freehold Regional School District’s new middle school in 2006, that did not happen.
It was, without question, a difficult year for the Upper Freehold Regional Board of Education, which not only faced issues with the new middle school, but also had to deal with an ongoing search for a permanent superintendent and a replacement for the elementary/middle school principal.
Groundbreaking postponed
At the March 15 Board of Education meeting, the district announced that groundbreaking for the new middle school on Ellisdale Road would not take place in April as planned. Interim Superintendent of Schools Robert Smith said he did not know when construction on the 46-acre parcel would begin. Smith said the delay was due to planned environmental remediation, as the board needed to clean up traces of the historic pesticides arsenic and dieldrin that were found on the tract.
At that time, Board of Education President Jeanette Bressi said the remediation costs would be within the overall budget for the $38.9 million school referendum, which passed in 2004.
Voters turned down funding
On April 18, Upper Freehold voters returned incumbents Lisa Herzer and Howard Kreiger to the board after a hotly contested race, while Allentown voters elected newcomer William Borkowski over incumbent Robert Cheff to the sole seat up for grabs.
Although residents in Upper Freehold voted down the first budget question, 529-524, which dealt with the bulk of the nearly $28 million budget, the spending plan passed because of the 190-173 vote it received in Allentown.
The second question, which asked voters to approve the hiring of additional teachers and personnel, failed in both towns in a vote of 720-685. The Upper Freehold Township Committee would ultimately vote 3-1 to restore $57,330 of the funding turned down by the voters when they defeated the second question.
Resident alleges partisanship
Four Seasons active-adult community resident Reno Zinzarella, 77, a former 28-year superintendent of a Bergen County school district and an active participant in public education for more than 40 years, blasted certain individuals in his development for their actions in the Board of Education election. Zinzarella said he was concerned that in the recent election, Gerald Nathanson, who at the time was also chairman of the Upper Freehold Township Republican Party, “picked Wendy Gansberg to run for the Board of Education.”
Zinzarella said no board candidate should have sponsorship from a political party. Nathanson, who has since resigned as township Republican chair, said there was “no conflict whatsoever” in his position as treasurer for Gansberg’s campaign.
Principal denied tenure
Upon recommendation from Smith, the board decided on April 19 not to offer tenure to elementary and middle school Principal Miriam Peluso. Peluso said she was baffled by Smith’s recommendation and even more puzzled by the board’s acceptance of his decision.
At a May 10 Board of Education meeting, which was held in the auditorium of Allentown High School due to the large number of Peluso supporters in attendance, the board voted 6-2 to grant her tenure and reappoint her as principal. However, she ended up resigning in September, only one day after the new school year began, and cited the delay of the construction of the new middle school as one reason for her resignation.
Construction called to a start
At its May 9 meeting, the Board of Health voted to allow work to begin on the Ellisdale Road property while the school district dealt with soil contamination found at the site. The state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) had approved the remediation plan for the contamination, which involved capping it under clean fill and asphalt at the site. The school would ultimately be rescheduled to open in September 2008.
Board member George King, who voted against the measure, voiced concerns with capping the contaminated soil under the parking lot because every school site eventually gets rebuilt and re-excavated.
Construction hits a snag
At the May 23 Planning Board meeting, Miscoski vowed that he would either be arrested or buried in the middle school parking lot by a bulldozer if the school district made any attempt to keep contaminated soils at the site of the new school.
Planning Board Chairman Richard Stern said that he thought capping the soil under the parking lot is “a poor way” to deal with the contamination, and that the contaminated soil should be removed from the site.
Public comment at a crowded meeting held June 28 at Allentown High School regarding the contamination seemed to be evenly divided between those against capping the contamination and those wanting the board to proceed with its remediation plan.
Stampe said the board had budgeted $500,000 for cleanup at the time of the referendum. It had been estimated that capping the contamination would cost about $950,000, whereas removing the soil could cost anywhere from $2 million to $10 million.
Some residents suggested moving the school to the 254-acre Breza Road tract where the Rockefeller Group proposed building 1.8 million square feet of warehouse space.
Allentown would later refuse to endorse an Office of Smart Growth (OSG) plan for an extension of its village center to include the Ellisdale Road site for the new middle school, which was the site’s means of getting public water/sewer service.
The Board of Education learned its only other wastewater treatment option for the site would be to tap into the Beacon Hill sewage treatment plant across the street, but a township ordinance would have to be changed in order to do so.
Frustrations were vented
At a July 19 Board of Education meeting, parents and staff expressed their frustrations about the lack of progress made on the new middle school.
On Aug. 16, a borough resident alleged that the Allentown mayor made “a backdoor attempt to derail” the new middle school project. Dan Wolden told the board that Fierstein contacted his wife when she was still an Upper Freehold Regional Board of Education member to try to gain support on the board for relocating the new school to a site on Breza Road.
Wolden’s wife, Kathryn, resigned her board position on Aug. 10.
Although Fierstein said he did speak with Kathryn Wolden around the time she said he did, he denied her version of the story.
In a letter sent to the board, Fierstein alleged that the December 2004 referendum vote was “tainted” by a lack of disclosure and that the remediation process was “fraught by future uncertainties as to its effectiveness, and the associated liabilities are not being addressed.” Bressi, who was board president at the time of the school site search, said that Fierstein’s letter contained “egregious” inaccuracies.
At a Sept. 6 meeting, Smith recommended that the board authorize the exploration of alternative sites for the new middle school. He said that the main difficulty in constructing the school at the Ellisdale Road site is getting an approved wastewater management plan.
The board decided on Sept. 13 to do a preliminary study on the Breza Road site at a cost not to exceed $4,000.
The report would ultimately conclude that the Breza Road property could support a school, but the district would have to purchase about 76 acres to get 50 usable acres due to wetlands. The report also determined that bridge improvements on Breza Road would be necessary to accommodate school traffic, which could have substantial costs.
Five local residents filed a petition on Sept. 13 asking the state commissioner of education to set aside the results of the school district’s December 2004 referendum. The petitioners, Micah Rasmussen, Diane Sterner and Councilman Daniel Zorovich, all of Allentown, and Marc Covitz and Nathanson, both of Upper Freehold, alleged that during a public meeting on June 28, school district officials acknowledged that prior to the election, the district was aware of but failed to disclose to voters the presence of dieldrin contamination on the proposed school site. On Oct. 3, Board of Education Attorney Viola Lordi filed a notice with the commissioner of education to dismiss the petition. The brief on behalf of the board cited that all challenges to the election results of a bond referendum proposal must be heard within 20 days of the election.
Board votes in new blood, criteria
The Board of Education voted 6-3 on Sept. 20 for newcomer Doug Anthony over former board member Cheff to fill the Allentown seat vacated by Wolden.
At its Oct. 4 meeting, the board revised its cleanup criteria for the new school property. The new Remedial Action Work Plan (RAWP) states that the contaminated soil would be blended with clean fill. Any contaminated “hot spots” would be completely removed from the property. There would be no capping and no deed restriction. Stampe expected it to be less than the original cleanup plan.
In November, the board unanimously approved the hiring of Kelly Huggins as the new principal for prekindergarten through fourth grade for 2006-07. The board also approved current middle school Vice Principal Mark Guterl as the new middle school principal.
At the Nov. 15 meeting, the board decided to appoint Hill International, of Marlton, as construction managers for the new middle school, and the company was given a contract for $621,800.
Murphy, who voted against the measure with Bressi, said he voted against Hill because, among other reasons, its bid was over $125,00 more than the lowest bid.