School Re-Districting

yahooyahoo said:

Jerrymaplewood said:
Why are they waiting to rezone the lower schools?  Cant we save money by addressing the two problems and not creating 3 or 4 more ( Rezoning and busing middle schoolers all over town) .  They seem very vague about their phases and plans. I think this is a ballsy thing to do until we get a real hire in. Hows the search going anyway...crickets crickets 

 This is what I don't understand.  They are pushing through the most important plan in decades without a permanent superintendent.

Why do you need a superintendent to solve a load-balancing problem and, at the same time, a demographic balancing problem?  I know it is important and I know it is controversial and I know it will cost money, but it's just a math problem.

tjohn said:

yahooyahoo said:

Jerrymaplewood said:
Why are they waiting to rezone the lower schools?  Cant we save money by addressing the two problems and not creating 3 or 4 more ( Rezoning and busing middle schoolers all over town) .  They seem very vague about their phases and plans. I think this is a ballsy thing to do until we get a real hire in. Hows the search going anyway...crickets crickets 

 This is what I don't understand.  They are pushing through the most important plan in decades without a permanent superintendent.

Why do you need a superintendent to solve a load-balancing problem and, at the same time, a demographic balancing problem?  I know it is important and I know it is controversial and I know it will cost money, but it's just a math problem.

 It's a lot more than a math problem.  It's a leadership problem, infrastructure problem, political problem, etc.  

Jerrymaplewood said:
Why are they waiting to rezone the lower schools?  Cant we save money by addressing the two problems and not creating 3 or 4 more ( Rezoning and busing middle schoolers all over town) .  They seem very vague about their phases and plans. I think this is a ballsy thing to do until we get a real hire in. Hows the search going anyway...crickets crickets 

 From all that I've heard, the problems are all intertwined.  You can't re-zone the lower schools without addressing the crowding issues there.  You can't address the crowding until you move the 5th grade to the middle schools.  The most feasible way to deal with that (as has been discussed at length) is to make one middle school 5-6 and the other 7-8. 

The phases seem clear, but there are many details that would need to be worked out if it is decided to move forward on this.  It would be highly wasteful to expend extensive time and money now to iron everything out unless there is a green light to move forward on the plan.

I'm actually glad we're doing this now with the current interim super, who from everything I've seen and heard has been the most compentant super by far that we've had in at least ten years.

Interestingly, today I had a conversation with someone from the  Flemington-Raritan School District. They have four K-4 elementary schools, a 5-6 Intermediate school, and a 7-8 Middle school. It seems to work well for them.

https://www.frsd.k12.nj.us/

We can't keep waiting with this stuff.  The crumbling schools with unusable bathrooms are real right now.  The surge in enrollment is real right now.  Seth Boyden is essentially a segregated school right now.  I don't want to stop, spend a year looking for a new person, and then give them a year to settle in before we start again.  Ficara said himself at the meeting I attended that it would be easy for him to kick it down the road, but irresponsible.  He wants to address it now so it isn't a huge immediate problem facing the new person.  All well thought out points, I thought.

I agree with both weirdbeard and filmcarp. We can’t keep postponing this hard work.

The Village Green did another nice summary of Ficarra's Long Range Facilities & Integration planning meeting #4:

https://villagegreennj.com/schools-kids/ficarra-facilities-improvements-and-integration-must-happen-together/

The last two planning meetings are:

• tonight (6/13) @ 7:30pm at SOMS, 
• tomorrow morning (6/14) @ 11am at the Board office on Academy 

Are we getting state aid after we combine the middle schools to fix the school facilities? Are we combining the middle schools to get to a number for state aid ...HMMMM...I will eat crow if they do anything about seth boyden after this happens ...

Also does seth boyden want to be redistricted?

I think SB is a great school with high test scores.  why do we get uncomfortable when a school is majority Black?

Jerrymaplewood said:
Are we getting state aid after we combine the middle schools to fix the school facilities? Are we combining the middle schools to get to a number for state aid ...HMMMM...

Are you referring to Title I funding?

sprout said:
Interestingly, today I had a conversation with someone from the  Flemington-Raritan School District. They have four K-4 elementary schools, a 5-6 Intermediate school, and a 7-8 Middle school. It seems to work well for them.
https://www.frsd.k12.nj.us/

It is worth noting that F-R's two middle school grades are smaller than the SOMSD's.  Their 5-6 school has 390 kids per grade.  Their 7-8 school has 420 kids per grade.  Also, F-R spends $17,657 pp whereas the SOMSD spends $15,003 pp.  Their student:teacher reatio is 9.8:1. Our student:teacher ratio is 12.8:1.

The SOMSD's 5-6, 7-8 middle schools will have 550 kids per grade.

I don't think that having a 5-6, 7-8 middle school setup even with 550 kids per grade will be the end of the world or mean that the wheels fall off the SOMSD, but I am against a 5-6, 7-8 middle school configuration because kids are more likely to get lost in larger grades and the bussing costs will be very significant and force us to cut core academic and social services.

Jerrymaplewood said:
Are we getting state aid after we combine the middle schools to fix the school facilities? Are we combining the middle schools to get to a number for state aid ...HMMMM...I will eat crow if they do anything about seth boyden after this happens ...
Also does seth boyden want to be redistricted?

The state has some very limited support for facilities upgrades.

Previously, the state would make "ROD Grants" to non-Abbotts like South Orange-Maplewood under which the state would pay for 30-40% of construction, but the state itself gets the money for ROD grants via its own bonding.  The bonding the legislature and the governors authorized in 2000 ($8.6 billion) and 2008 ($3.9 billion) has been depleted.  

It is possible that the state will reauthorize bonding for Abbott construction and non-Abbotts, but the Abbotts would take 70% of the money and I haven't heard any legislator talk about it anyway.  Right now they are focused -- with some justification -- on bonding for vo-techs, however, in contrast to previous rounds of school construction bonding, the legislature is having the the vo-tech bond get voter approval. 

And even if the legislature and Murphy approved another round of bonding for school construction, the debt service costs will just eat into K-12 opex aid, so it wouldn't be a total triumph, although I suppose a district like the SOMSD facing a very big construction expense would be a net winner.

At present, the only state support for construction we will be eligible for is "Debt Service Aid," but Debt Service Aid is dependent on annual appropriations from the legislature and has been cut in recent years and can be cut again.  Of the SOMSD's $4,169,235 in debt payments for 2017-18, Debt Service Aid only covers $386,434.  To give another example, of West Orange's 6,086,977 in debt payments, Debt Service Aid only covers $320,204.  

Even a low-income non-Abbott cannot expect much Debt Service Aid.  Bloomfield's Debt Payments are $3,287,900, but it only gets $175,209.

If the State of NJ were to cut money for Debt Service Aid, school districts would be liable for making up every penny of lost aid.  

I support the bonding as necessary, but we shouldn't be under any illusions about the state paying for more than a small fraction of it.