Facilities among top issues facing Edison board

BY KATHY CHANG
Staff Writer

EDISON — One of the Board of Education’s primary goals for the coming school year is to explore ways of easing overcrowding in the schools.

“We will look to see what can be done this year to address the severe problem of overcrowding in the schools,” board President Gene Maeroff said.

While no construction is expected during the school year, Maeroff said officials will conduct an assessment of the school district’s facilities.

For example, officials will look at projects that were shelved due to financial constraints, Maeroff said. These include the science labs at Edison High School, which, like John P. Stevens High School, was to get state-of-theart science labs. Due to financial issues, Edison High School’s plan was scrapped. The science labs at J.P. Stevens opened in March.

The school district has been facing overcrowding issues for some time. Last year, school officials proposed two bond referendums, one a $29 million bond that would have funded a new 672-student elementary school. Voters denied both bond referendums.

Maeroff said another goal is for school officials to start considering ways to improve student achievement, by looking at the New Jersey assessment scores.

“We have a baseline and we want to see where we go from there,” he said, adding that officials want to see where improvements can bemade, such as with a reconfiguration of personnel.

Maeroff said the establishment of an independent education foundation, which would raise money privately for school initiatives, could provide some relief to taxpayers.

“There have been efforts made in the past; however, they have floundered,” he said. “Now we want to make sure one is up and running.”

Another goal, carried over from last year, deals with communications.

“We are expanding the community outreach goal,” Maeroff said. “We have had great success with our TV, and same with our website. We want to build on that and reach out to the community as one and form a relationship and get support for our budgets.”

Maeroff said one out of five households in the township send children to the public school system.

“Most people do not use the public schools, and we need to reach out to those people and have some idea [of how we can] better address them,” he said.