ROBBINSVILLE: BOE thanks school referendum volunteers

By Charley Falkenburg, Special Writer
   ROBBINSVILLE — The high school’s Student Activity Center was a flurry of festivity recently as the crowd indulged in mini chocolate cupcakes, sipped tea and toasted with Styrofoam cups of coffee to a job well done.
   The Robbinsville Board of Education was in full celebration mode Dec. 18 as it took time from its meeting to revel in the success of its $18.9 million construction referendum, which voters overwhelmingly had passed seven days earlier. The funds will be used to provide more classrooms, bigger cafeterias and make other upgrades at the overcrowded Sharon Elementary School and Pond Road Middle School.
   ”This was the effort of many people — to make a project like this successful takes the work of a lot of volunteers,” Superintendent Steve Mayer said. “It certainly would not have moved forward without the wisdom and strength of this board.”
   The board is now in the process of going out to bid for the construction work, which will be completed over the next two years.
   If all goes as planned, Sharon School will open a new two-story wing with 24 classrooms and a new gym, as well as an expanded cafeteria in the original part of the building, by September 2014. Pond Road Middle School will open five new classrooms in September 2013 and complete the expansion of its cafeteria by September 2014.
   The passage of the referendum Dec. 11 came less than two years after voters defeated a more expensive $39.6 million proposal to build a new elementary school. The 2012 referendum called for expanding existing schools, instead of building a new one, and was half the cost.
   A total 59.5 percent of voters supported the December referendum, which passed by a vote of 1,538 to 1,045 (including all mail-in and provisional ballots). The tax impact for a home assessed at $400,000 is an estimated $192 a year.
   The expansion projects are the district’s solution to the overcrowding at Sharon and Pond Road, which are 334 students over their intended capacity and facing a projected enrollment growth of another 335 students from housing developments that are approved, but not yet completed.
   Board member Sharon DeVito recalled kicking off the Classrooms for Kids campaign back in August and working tirelessly for its passage until the very morning of the election.
   ”We finished the campaign like lunatics that morning in the freezing cold in parking lots at Pond and Sharon schools handing out ‘Don’t Forget to Vote’ papers,” Ms. DeVito said. “We did good guys, we did really good.”
   Board of Education Vice President Carol Boyne said the referendum’s success showed what a long way the district has come from March 2010 when voters defeated the $39.6 million referendum. She credited the efforts of 27 volunteers and board members who worked to make sure residents had accurate information to make an informed decision on the less costly 2012 proposal.
   ”Coming off a defeated referendum is not an easy thing,” Mrs. Boyne said. “That small army of people is the reason why students for generations to come will have the appropriate facilities to be educated in.”
   Once the construction projects are completed, the district has plans to convert Sharon School from a K-3 to a K-4 building to reduce the number of children at Pond Road, which now has 1,111 students.
   The new space at Sharon will also enable the district to get rid of the five leased classroom trailers on the lawn of the elementary school and relocate the three kindergarten classes at Windsor School to Sharon to unite all 10 kindergarten classes under one roof.