Rolling
with their new classrooms
Phillipsburg
High adds 10 temporary classrooms to try to deal with space
crunch
Sunday, September 12, 2004 • BY MIKE FRASSINELLI
• Star-Ledger Staff
On their first day back to
school, Phillipsburg High students were greeted by snazzy
maroon banners celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the
Stateliners' football squad as the "Winningest Team in
NJ."
Less than a mile away, a
construction billboard over an expansive farm field bearing
Gov. James E. McGreevey's name boasted the "Future Home of
Phillipsburg High School."
Nowhere in the
neighborhood was a sign saying, "Phillipsburg High: Home of
31 Classroom Trailers."
But to students at the
Warren County school, the signs are everywhere.
"We need a new school,"
Juanita Adames, a junior, said in front of 10 new temporary
classrooms Tuesday. "This is stupid. This is my first day
and I have four classes in the trailer court."
"They look nicer than the
current trailers, but I don't think we should have them,"
junior Brian Stickel said on his way to lunch. "I think we
should have a new school."
Phillipsburg is a
special-needs district, one of the 31 poorest in the state,
and is relying on state funding for its new school. The
state Supreme Court six years ago ruled in the Abbott vs.
Burke school parity case that New Jersey replace dilapidated
school buildings in poor districts, giving those students
the same educational opportunities as ones in wealthy areas.
The state earmarked $6 billion to build schools in Abbott
districts.
In Phillipsburg, school
officials hoped they would be in a new high school by now
when one was first discussed six years ago.
Now, they are cautiously
optimistic they can be in by 2007.
Meanwhile, they have tried
to stretch space in their stately, but cramped, Babe
Ruth-era high school by adding trailer classroom units. The
trailers have stretched space in a high school that has a
functional capacity of around 1,200 students, about 600
fewer students than it has.
The 10 new units, built by
Gianforcaro Architects, Engineers, Planners of Chester are
air-conditioned and heated, and have bathrooms, new desks
and that new building smell. Inside the units, it is tough
to tell them apart from classrooms in a building. School
officials are leasing the new trailers for three years for
just over $1 million.
The trailers are mostly
used by students in honors classes, and school officials
have tried to keep students in the temporary classrooms for
two class periods at a time to limit the amount of distance
they must travel.
"No one is really happy
with trailers, but as far as trailers go, we've got the
Cadillacs," new high school principal Mary Jane Deutsch
said.
Anthony Gianforcaro, a
principal of Gianforcaro Architects, Engineers, Planners,
said that with the construction boom in New Jersey schools,
temporary classrooms are going up all around the state as
"swing space."
In addition to
Phillipsburg, Gianforcaro has built temporary classrooms in
schools in Washington Township of Morris County, Piscataway,
Rutherford and East Rutherford. Thirty-one trailers are the
most of any Abbott high school in New Jersey, according to
the New Jersey Schools Construction Corporation. Keansburg
High School is next with 25, followed by two Paterson High
Schools, Eastside with 20 and John F. Kennedy with
16.
"Nobody puts these in for
permanent classroom space," Gianforcaro said. "It's a
temporary solution to allow them time until a permanent
solution is designed. In the case in Phillipsburg, it's a
new high school. In some schools, it's a new
addition."
Phillipsburg
administrators are of one mind with students when it comes
to getting a new school.
With more than 350,000
square feet, the new school at Roseberry Street and
Belvidere Road in Lopatcong Township will give students
twice the space of the present school on Hillcrest Boulevard
in Phillipsburg.
The present high school
would be used as a middle school.
Initial concerns by
Lopatcong Township officials over which municipality would
provide snow-plowing and police and fire coverage to the new
school were resolved when the school agreed to pick up
services and Lopatcong Township and Phillipsburg entered
into an interlocal agreement, Phillipsburg Board of
Education president Rod Pianelli said.
Pianelli said there also
were questions about who would pay for the project. The
state will.
He said he would rather
see the $100 million-plus project be done right than be done
quickly.
"It (the new high school)
is going to last a good 75 to 100 years, so we don't want to
hurry up and be sorry," Pianelli said.
Deutsch is a 1976
Phillipsburg graduate and has been an educator and
administrator at the school for the past 25 years. She said
that while the enrollment at the high school has yet to
change dramatically since her days as a student -- 1,800
students now vs. 1,625 students then -- the need for space
has.
"In 1976, there were 35
kids in a class, no computer labs and special education was
in one room," she said.
Today, and rightly so, she
said, parents and teachers want no more than 25 students in
a class. Computer labs, art rooms, music rooms, additional
science labs and space for special education programs also
stretch an old building. And at some point, Greenwich
Township and other fast-growing municipalities in district
will provide dramatic enrollment increases.
Some projections have the
high school growing to more than 3,000 students by 2010,
Pianelli said.
Possible alternatives to
the trailers included split sessions at school and using an
off-campus building, but school officials determined that it
was best to keep students on site and on schedule,
Phillipsburg business administrator Bill Poch
said.
From the road, the
trailers fade into the scenery behind the red-brick school
with big pillars and a clock tower.
Up close, they seemingly
sprout like ivy. The 10 new classrooms -- five double
classrooms at 28 by 66 feet -- are in addition to seven new
ones last year and 14 units put in place about seven years
ago. The first 21 trailers have no bathrooms.
Phillipsburg
Superintendent H. Gordon Pethick wishes the new campus were
here already and that students wouldn't have to go outside
-- sometimes in rainy weather -- to get from the main school
building to the temporary classrooms.
He said a trailer court is
not ideal, but it is a "temporary fix" in a growing district
and he feels the high school project is on a good
track.
That's not much
consolation to Joe Kneser and other Phillipsburg High
students.
They hoped to spend at
least one year in what could become one of the state's
finest high school campuses, complete with a clock tower,
spacious auditorium, swimming pool, media center and fields
for youth sports groups.
"It would be nice if we
had a new school," said Kneser, a junior. "It kind of
stinks. We were promised it a while ago."
Mike Frassinelli covers Warren County. He can be reached
at mfrassinelli@starledger.com or (908) 475-1218.
Copyright 2004 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
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