Patience running out Lopat district looks at ways to fund high school Thursday, August 16, 2007 • By ANDREA EILENBERGER • The Express-Times The future of the new Phillipsburg High School remains unclear but one thing is certain: School officials, parents and community members fighting for the promised but unfunded facility are getting restless. Some are considering a feasibility study to explore alternate ways of building the school if the state fails to give up the money. "We're ever hopeful the state will meet the commitment the court has mandated to fully fund Abbott construction projects. However, we don't feel that waiting should be in perpetuity," said Lopatcong Township School Superintendent Michael Rossi. Phillipsburg has been waiting two years on $88 million to construct the new school at the northern end of Roseberry Street. The Schools Construction Corp., a state agency established to oversee a court-ordered school building program for poor districts, ran out of money due to waste and mismanagement. This month, that agency was reorganized and became the Schools Development Authority. The Lopatcong Township School Board on Tuesday decided that, absent full state funding, it would in January seek a feasibility study to investigate potential ways to build the school. It would be done in cooperation with any other interested district that sends students to Phillipsburg High School, according to a resolution the board approved. Besides Phillipsburg, Lopatcong, Greenwich, Alpha, Bloomsbury and Pohatcong schools send students to Phillipsburg High School. Rossi said students from the five sending districts comprise about 52 percent of the high school's population of 1,700 students. One option to explore is altering the nature of the sending and receiving districts while keeping the cluster of schools intact. "The cluster has been viable for 136 years," Rossi said. Lopatcong board President Ernest Gallant said the sending districts pay tuition based on the number of students but regionalizing the districts could mean payments based on property value. He wants to examine those potential costs to determine if it's a viable option. "We owe it to the public to at least take a look at it," Gallant said. Gallant said he didn't vote for the feasibility study Tuesday because he wanted more information like the price of a study and what kind of data it would yield. He's interested in a feasibility study presentation expected during an Aug. 22 committee meeting of key district leaders including superintendents, mayors and board presidents. They expect to find out how complex a feasibility study could become, how much money various types of studies would cost, how long they could take and other details. Greenwich Superintendent Kevin Brennan said school board members in his district have also been considering supporting a feasibility study and will likely discuss it further during their next meeting at the end of the month. "The first thing I think we'd like to do is hold all of us together," Brennan said. "It is a sensible unit given the geography of the area." Reporter Andrea Eilenberger can be reached at 610-258-7171 or by e-mail at aeilenberger@express-times.com.