By Joanne Degnan, Staff Writer
ROBBINSVILLE — The school district is asking residents this week to take a brief online survey designed to gauge the community’s expectations for its schools during difficult economic times, Superintendent Steven Mayer says.
”We’re trying to assess a few different things and hope it gives us some information to work with,” Mr. Mayer said Friday. “We’re trying to get a sense of general values and what the expectations are for education in Robbinsville.”
Although the survey does not specifically ask residents if they support building a new elementary school, several survey questions appear designed to hear residents’ opinions of the status quo at the overcrowded K-3 Sharon School, where some of the building’s 830 students are being taught in five modular trailers.
For example, the survey asks residents for feedback on the importance of a comfortable learning environment, class size, whether trailers are “adequate for learning,” and if building maintenance should sometimes be postponed in a “challenging economic environment.”
Last March, voters defeated a $39.6 million construction referendum to build a new K-5 school and make repairs to Sharon School and Pond Road Middle School. Since then, the Board of Education has wrestled with the question of how much the bad economy affected the voters’ decision, and whether it was a mistake to seek funds for both a new school and building repairs in one referendum, causing some voters to mistakenly assume all money was for a new school.
The Board of Education informally agreed at its August meeting that given the referendum results and the economy, it would not ask voters to consider another referendum before December 2012 — despite the fact that steep enrollment increases are expected to continue. Under that timetable, a new school could not be built before 2014, even if a referendum is approved in two years.
When asked last week if the survey was intended to determine if voter opposition to a new school had softened, Mr. Mayer said the primary goal was to obtain feedback from residents on the quality of the district’s education programs.
”There are facilities questions in the survey, but apart from that, that conversation (about a new school) is in the background of more pressing questions about program needs,” Mr. Mayer said.
There are 10 survey questions asking residents to assess the overall quality of the school district and the programs it offers. Residents are asked to indicate whether they agree or disagree with statements using a five-point scale with the number 1 meaning “strongly disagree” and number 5 meaning “strongly agree.”
Respondents are asked if they agree that Robbinsville students’ performance should be consistent with “New Jersey’s top performing school districts,” whether housing and property values are linked to the quality of the local school district, and whether “the successful Robbinsville graduate will attend a four-year college.”
The survey asks if world languages, technology and art — as well as after-school programs such as athletics, drama and music — are important parts of a strong educational program. Other questions ask if a successful school district depends on the recruitment and retention of excellent administrators and teachers.
Mr. Mayer said he hoped the online Community Values Survey would give the district good information to “refine its mission” and be more responsive to what the community wants. To that end, the district also recently launched a “listening tour” to gather feedback from different constituencies in the community, he said.
The first stop on the listening tour was a Jan. 10 meeting at the high school with Robbinsville families who send their children to private schools instead of public schools. Mr. Mayer said he and Assistant Superintendent Kathie Foster wanted feedback on the reasons families choose out-of-district schools for their children when they are already paying property taxes to support the public schools.
About 8 percent of the 100 or so Robbinsville families who send their children to private schools responded to the invitation, Mr. Mayer said. Their answers varied, he said, with some families citing religious reasons and others saying that at the time they first enrolled their oldest child in private school years ago the Robbinsville public schools did not have the reputation they have today.
More meetings aimed at “understanding our constituency better” will be held in the months ahead, Mr. Mayer said. The next will be in February or March with parents of preschoolers who are not yet part of the township school system, he said. The district may also “weave the budget process” into the tour, he said.
Repeated cuts in state education aid have left Robbinsville property taxpayers paying 95 percent of the cost to run the district’s schools, Mr. Mayer has said. The fallout has been a contentious local school budget process, which last year included staff layoffs, program cuts and higher school taxes.
After Robbinsville lost 58 percent of its state aid in 2010, the district proposed a $38.2 million budget with an 11-cent increase in the tax rate. Voters defeated the school budget in the April school elections, which led the Township Council to make additional cuts that lowered the tax rate increase to 9 cents.
The postcards announcing the online survey were to be mailed this week to all households, whether they have children in township schools or not, Mr. Mayer said.
He said the survey would be available on the district’s website at www.robbinsville.k12.nj.us by the end of the week.

