Parents, officials to rally for new school Advocates push state for help building $88 million facility for Phillipsburg High students. Thursday, April 19, 2007 • By DANIEL HAUSMANN • The Express-Times PHILLIPSBURG | Saturday morning parents and school district officials will gather at the Lopatcong Park pool pavilion to tour the adjacent new high school site and rally for its completion. If they gain permission from the state, they plan to set up a podium on the dirt where the high school should be. Many represent parents from the surrounding sending districts of Lopatcong, Pohatcong, Greenwich, Bloomsbury and Alpha. Judy Liptak, Lopatcong School Board member-elect, organized a public forum last month on the project. Liptak, a Clinton teacher, feels area children are being left behind. "Here we are in one of the wealthiest states in our country, we pay the highest taxes and yet our kids are in trailers," Liptak said. Helene Meissner is part of a Please Help Save Our School Committee started by the district in 2005 to act as an advocacy arm to get the high school built. She's thrilled by the accelerated involvement of township parents. "We have been talking about (the high school) for so long in Phillipsburg that it's falling on deaf ears," Meissner said. "Having these people on board has rejuvenated the movement." So far the only thing the district has from the state's $16 million investment in the project are some sketches of what the $88 million building would look like, a few athletic fields and a road to nowhere. "We've lost a generation of students to inadequate facilities," school board President Paul Rummerfield said. "When people find out we have 31 trailers they can't believe it." Russa Nollstadt, a stay-at-home mother of three children ages 7 and under, said so far the parents group has collected 665 signatures for a petition across Phillipsburg and the sending districts. "It's going very well," Nollstadt said. "(Phillipsburg School District) has given us their total support." The School Construction Corporation was set up to build or renovate 350 schools in New Jersey's 31 poorest school districts, known as Abbott districts. By 2005, of an initial $6 billion legislative allocation, there was only enough left to fund 59 projects. Phillipsburg was not on that list of 59. By the time the Phillipsburg project was stalled in 2005, the state had finished $16 million in site preparation for a new school. Scheduled to speak Saturday are Phillipsburg Superintendent Gordon Pethick, Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow, Assemblyman Mike Doherty and Phillipsburg Mayor Harry Wyant. An invitation was sent to acting Gov. Richard Codey, but his office hasn't said if he is coming. Codey is scheduled to attend a Democratic Party event Saturday night in Washington Township. Reporter Daniel Hausmann can be reached at 610-258-7171 or by e-mail at dhausmann@express-times.com. © 2007 The Express-Times. Used with permission.