Other happenings from the latest Monroe Township Board of Education meeting
Holly Glen Elementary School has been one of the Monroe Township Board of Education’s consistent talking points for over a year now. The latest BOE meeting was no exception.
During the public portion of the meeting, Ed Knorr addressed the board regarding the ongoing issues at Holly Glen.
“The problem here is, again, it’s 14 months into that school being closed. What has been done to fix the school?” Knorr asked. “Instead of trying to understand the problems, you’ve wasted probably over a million dollars by the time it’s all said and done.”
Knorr continued, saying the school could have been open this past September had the situation been handled properly.
Superintendent of Schools Richard Perry responded by giving an update.
“Right now, we have everything on hold in terms of cleaning and spending money on it,” Perry said. “We’re going through the first two phases of the exterior drainage, the roof repairs, the underground drainage, the sealing of windows. We have the county approval and now the state’s approving it. Once the state gives us a green light, we’re going to go out for the bids to start handling the first two phases of that.”
He added once they stop the moisture from getting into the school they could begin cleaning and address the HVAC issues.
“We’re not spending anymore money cleaning until we fix what the problem is,” Perry stated.
In other news:
- Assistant Superintendent Gregory Cappello addressed the Monroe Township School District’s new website:
“One of the things I was encouraged to take a look at when I got here, as director of technology, I was asked to look at the website,” Cappello said. “Over the last six months, we surveyed the staff, students, community members and found out what the needs were from everybody.”
Cappello said they chose Education Networks to assist in creating a new website.
“[They] worked with us to come up with something that really shows the pride that our students, staff and community members have in our schools,” he said.
Cappello discussed the importance of social media and having an effective website.
“Our old website was getting roughly 800 to 1,200 hits per day,” he said. “The new website is up around 4,000 hits per day. We’re looking to break 10,000 hits per day within six months. We’re looking to increase our social media by at least 100 percent; so we’re going to double our Twitter feed and Facebook page.”
Cappello encouraged the community to visit the updated website, https://monroetwp.k12.nj.us/.
- A resolution was proposed to sell 24 laptop computers, two desktop computers and 41 Google Chromebooks on govdeals.org. Board Vice President James Henderson suggested the computers be auctioned to members of the community.
“My suggestion is this item be pulled and we give our community residents an opportunity to bid on these 24 laptops, two desktops and some of these Chromebooks before putting them on the website,” Henderson said.
Board member Jeff Simpler questioned the legality of Henderson’s concept.
“I don’t think we can do that,” Simpler said. “I think there’s a law that says we can’t resell to a third party, which would be the community. I think the only place we can sell them is [the website].”
After deliberation, the board decided to pull the item in question until they have more clarity on the options to sell the computers.
- The next Board of Education meeting will take place on Dec. 20 at 7 p.m. at Williamstown High School in room D-103. This meeting is open to the public.
