high school – Hank Kalet

Enough already: let Monroe build its high school

Opponents of the location of a land swap that will allow a new Monroe high school to be built on land that is now part of Thompson Park need to turn their attention to something else.

Their latest salvo — a letter to the DEP complaining about missed deadlines — is nothing more than a nuisance filing that offers little benefit to anyone. The best they can realistically hope for — as their lawyer, Richard Webster, admits — is to slow down a project down that will be built.

”It is unlikely that this will derail the project, but it is a possibility. At the minimum it should delay it,” Mr. Webster said Thursday. “We fully expect to get a letter from the DEP saying that township will have to go back to the state and get a new approval.”

If that occurs, then no one benefits — not the environmentalists, because the trade will still go through; not the taxpayers, because the delay likely will mean increased costs; and not the students, who will be forced to continue attending class under crowded conditions.

I’m sure there are bigger dragons for the environmental groups to slay.

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Dispatches: The meter’s still running

Dispatches, No. 2, is up. It’s on the Monroe high school plan.

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Stupid is as stupid does

Stop being stupid. That’s the advice I’d give to the student or students who scrawled two bomb threats in graffiti in bathrooms at South Brunswick High School recently. I know it was a prank, but it is not funny.

Here’s the editorial we wrote last year ($) when the same kind of nonsense occurred:

Enough is enough.

Five times in just over a month South Brunswick High School has had to be evacuated because of a prank, bomb threats either called into the school or left in a note or scrawled on walls in the building.

The threats — three of which occurred in early May and two last week — were obvious pranks, according to school officials, who nonetheless decided not to take any chances. The building was evacuated with about three hours of class time lost.

We think the district has acted appropriately — it would be foolish not to take seriously any potential threat against the 2,800 or so students and staff members in the building.

The district also has made efforts to punish the pranksters while preventing future hoaxes from taking place.

Two students were arrested in early May in conjunction with one of the threats, charged with making terroristic threats, false public alarm, criminal mischief and conspiracy by local police and expelled by the district.

And school officials promise the same treatment for anyone else caught in connection with the other four threats. (An anonymous donor is offering a $500 reward to anyone with information that leads to the arrest of one of the pranksters.)

School Principal Tim Matheny also announced that additional bomb threats would result in the conversion of planned half days into full school days.

Unfortunately, threats are about the only tool administrators have at their disposal to deal with potential pranksters. It is really up to students to make sure that this foolishness stops.

Students need to understand that these hoaxes are not funny. They waste time and resources, create panic among the community and could, down the road, lead to a “Boy Who Cried Wolf” mentality, lulling students and staff into a false sense of security. The more false threats that are made, the more likely it becomes for students and staff to take them lightly — which could have dire consequences should a threat turn out to be real.

Students can make this stop by taking responsibility for their school and for the actions that their peers take. This means confronting students who find these sick jokes funny and making it clear to peers that they will not be afraid to turn in offending students.

The message has to be made clear: Bomb threats are not funny.

No. They’re not.

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Historical uncertaintiesand the Monroe high school

Ah the vicissitudes of historical debate.

The efforts by Monroe — the Township Council and the school board — to push forward with plans for a new high school on a 35-acre section of Thompson Park have turned what otherwise might be an esoteric historical question into a massive controversy with huge implications for public policy and Monroe taxpayers.

The question: Where exactly was Bethel Indian Town (also known as the Bethel Mission) actually located?

The answer appears to depend on which historian you speak with.

Monroe Township Historian John Katerba places the encampment, at which Presbyterian missionary David Brainerd converted the Delaware Indians to Christianity (or, at least, tried to), at or near the Jamesburg Municipal Building near the corner of Forgate Drive and Perrineville Road — at the southwestern corner of Thompson Park. He said the

Monroe Township Historical Society researched the Bethel site in the 1970s and concluded it was located near the Jamesburg Municipal Building. He said the research was based on “evidence or things that people had witnessed or documented,” including early 1800s documentation from Alexander Redman, who bought the property at that time.

Richard Walling, a historical consultant from Somerville, has a different location in mind — “at the headwaters of the Wigwam Brook, which was located in what is now Thompson Park.”

He said he has 19th-century geological survey maps and a 1953 Middlesex County engineering map that put the brook’s headwaters in the location where the high school is to be built.

And then there is the survey by Richard Grubb and Associates, a Cranbury archeological firm. It shows no evidence of a settlement on the high school site.

(Township Business Administrator Wayne) Hamilton said the results show no sign of the 40 cabins, two schools and church said to make up the 18th-century mission, which many believe was located on the Thompson Park parcel.

“There is absolutely no evidence of that kind of settlement being on the 35 acres,” he said. “This is based on hard, scientific evidence.”

Mr. Hamilton said the survey did turn up some artifacts but added that “with any property in New Jersey, it’s not unusual to find artifacts.”

Richard Grubb said Thursday that the company is “recommending that we did not find Bethel.”

From my perspective, there just doesn’t seem to be enough evidence to hault the high school project. Let’s get the building up.

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It’s the district’s responsibility

The Monroe school board wants to explore its options before deciding how to pay for a new high school — yes, pay for a new high school already approved by voters.

The problem is that the $82.9 million approved by voters in 2003 is about $36 million less than the building is now estimated to cost. Part of the cost hike is due to a slower-than-anticipated process surrounding a complicated land swap between Middlesex County and the township that needs state Green Acres approval — a delay that has pushed back the start of construction.

As we said in an earlier editorial, there is plenty of blame to go around on this and it is incumbent upon the board to get the project moving.

The increased price tag, however, has added another wrinkle to a controversial project (there is some opposition to the land swap locally and among the state’s environmental community). Were the state to give final approval tomorrow, the district would still need to figure out how to pay the balance of the project — or whether it might have to scale back its plans.

The board has asked its Finance Committee to look into the matter and may turn to the township for help.

That raises some concerns. The township already has done as much as it can — the land swap made a lot of sense and helped save the district on property acquisition. To ask the township to get further involved would be an abdication of responsibility on the part of the board: A township contribution to the project would not necessarily safe taxpayers money, but would allow the district to reduce the amount for which it seeks approval from the voters. This would be disingenuous — a bureaucratic game of three-card monte.

It also would be a financial mistake: The board can charge Jamesburg for a portion of the interest on the high school project, because Jamesburg accounts for about a fifth of the student body; the township cannot. That would lessen Jamesburg’s potential contribution (I don’t wish to imply that the district should soak Jamesburg, but that the borough should pay its fair share).
In the end, I think there is only one legitimate option: Scale back the design for the new school, cutting its potential pricetag, and ask voters to fund that figure. It is the only fair thing to do.

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