EDITORIAL
Tuesday is election day again in Robbinsville, but this time it’s classrooms, not candidates, on the ballot.
The Board of Education is asking voters to approve $18.9 million for 29 new classrooms, most in a two-story addition to Sharon Elementary School. Pond Road Middle School would get five new classrooms (by converting space inside the media center) and both schools are in line for facility upgrades, including cafeteria expansions to accommodate additional students.
The overcrowding at the K-8 level is undisputed. The elementary and middle schools are 334 students over their instructional capacity. Children are now learning inside modular trailers parked on the Sharon School lawn, music classes are held in hallways, and teachers are using former closets for small group instruction.
The outlook, if nothing is done, is bleak. New housing developments that already have township approvals will add another 335 students to the school system in the next few years, which will only exacerbate current overcrowding.
Where are we to put all these students? Some referendum critics think the eighth grade should be moved to Robbinsville High School to free up space in the middle school. This ignores the fact that there are already 800 students in the grade 9-12 high school and there isn’t enough classroom space in that building to add another whole grade, especially with rising enrollment projections.
So what’s the alternative? Adding more modular trailers on the lawn at Sharon School is one solution, but the cost of leasing a trailer comes out of the district’s operating budget, unlike a construction project financed over 20 years that is categorized as debt service. This is important because operational budgets are subject to the state’s 2 percent cap law.
Therefore, the cost to lease modular classrooms ($350,000 to start because of the need to run utilities to the trailer and $100,000 in subsequent years) comes at the expense of existing educational programs supported by the operating budget. Leasing more trailers could mean a future with fewer AP classes, less teachers, larger class sizes, and no freshman or junior varsity sports.
So how much will an $18.9 million referendum to build 29 classrooms cost taxpayers? The average home assessed at $400,000 would have to pay $192 more in school taxes. Can residents afford that? Most will probably say they cannot. But the more important question is whether they can afford not to.
Referendum proponents argue we all have a financial interest in the passage of referendum, regardless of whether we have children in grades K-8, because our home values are at stake. Not many families want to buy houses in a community with a lackluster school district, or so the argument goes. True enough, but homebuyers also aren’t attracted to communities with high property taxes.
Therefore, the more salient argument in favor of the referendum is that it’s the right thing to do for the children — and it’s the best option we have. Two years ago, the district proposed a $39.6 million referendum to build a brand new K-5 school to fix the current overcrowding problem and accommodate the additional students coming from the new housing developments. Robbinsville voters rejected that 2010 proposal, and are now presented with an $18.9 million alternative that solves the problem at half the cost to taxpayers — an average $16 a month.
Adding classrooms to two existing buildings is a more sensible alternative to throwing money away on leased trailers (at the expense of educational programs) or paying twice as much for a brand new school building. We urge a ‘yes’ vote on the $18.9 million school expansion referendum on Dec. 11.

