High school answers few But the questions are many. Parents offer up ideas on how to get new P'burg High built. Thursday, March 08, 2007 • By DANIEL HAUSMANN • The Express-Times LOPATCONG TWP. | Parents and administrators left a forum on the stalled Phillipsburg High School project with no clear answers on whether the plan will ever get off the ground. The local Statehouse delegation of state Sen. Leonard Lance, Assemblyman Mike Doherty and Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow called on the 100 in attendance to continue the fight. The meeting, hosted by the Lopatcong PTA, was similar to last week's forum hosted by Greenwich Township School District. Phillipsburg has been waiting on $88 million to complete the new high school at the northern end of Roseberry Street for close to two years. The Schools Construction Corp., a state agency established to build schools in New Jersey, ran out of money in July 2005 after years of waste and mismanagement. The SCC only had enough money to work on 59 out of 350 projects statewide. Attempts to resurrect the program haven't been successful. Parents, frustrated with the delays, called out any number of ideas. One involved regionalizing the school district and abandoning Phillipsburg and the 136-year sending-district relationship altogether. "To look at some of the issues of separating would be the worst thing," Phillipsburg Superintendent Gordon Pethick said. "We can do it, but we're not going to get it separate." Pethick said his office crunched the numbers, and a secession move by the sending districts to start their own high school would add $600 to $800 to homeowners' property tax bills. "We need to be a coalition," Pethick said. It was a recurring theme throughout the two-and-a-half-hour forum. Lopatcong Township Superintendent Mike Rossi spelled out a scenario in which his district pulls out of Phillipsburg and goes to North Hunterdon. Rossi said students would spend at least an hour on a school bus going to high school each day. "There is absolutely no way a sending district is going to go somewhere else and it will benefit the children," Rossi said. Lance spelled out the obstacles in front of Phillipsburg: The district has to get a long-range facilities plan approved by the state Department of Education, and Phillipsburg has to get on the list of 59. At the same time, the dollars become an issue. The state may put a bond question on a November ballot to fund the school projects. Another option is the New Jersey Education Law Center could file a $3.25 billion lawsuit to make the state follow court-ordered financial parity for school districts. Lance said he doesn't think voters statewide will support a bond initiative that doesn't fund suburban districts. Meanwhile, the student population is going up and so is the number of trailers at the high school. Pethick said 40 percent of the 1,710 high-schoolers are in the 31 trailers. The district's projections show the population will increase to 1,921 in 2010. Lopatcong eighth-grade grade student Nick Mengucci will be a junior that year and likely will be walking through winter weather to get to a class in a trailer. With construction scheduled to last about three years for the new building, there's a good chance the current 1927 building will be Mengucci's high school for all four years. "It's not bad; it's just small," Mengucci said. "I want to see a new school for the community." Reporter Daniel Hausmann can be reached at 610-258-7171 or by e-mail at dhausmann@express-times.com. © 2007 The Express-Times. Used by NJ.com with permission.