Talk about new high school
should focus on education

Recent editorials and articles in local newspapers have focused too much on the land swap portion of Monroe Township’s school bond referendum and not enough on the quality of education that comes with the construction of this new high school.  

I urge Monroe residents to focus on the thousands of reasons we do have for constructing this new high school: the present and future generations of children who will benefit from this facility.

I am a member of the Ad-Hoc Committee on Growth and Development (a group of parents, educators and members of the community) that met regularly after the defeat of last year’s referendum to discuss alternatives for Monroe’s enrollment demands. The committee members came to the conclusion that adding on to existing schools, or attempting to build a much lower-cost middle school would not meet the needs of our community. Knowing what was needed and coming up with an alternate plan that our community would support at the polls was the objective of this committee.

The committee proposed to the Board of Education that it scale down the size of last year’s failed high school referendum. What was also clear was that an alternate location would need to be found.

Why these major concerns? These were the three major reasons given for the defeat of the last year’s referendum: cost (too expensive), duplication of facilities, and the need for the new project to be more centrally located. The proposed campus-style setting created by the new high school, because of its location to other existing facilities, immediately solves the top three reasons given for the first referendum’s defeat last September.

My hope is that the thousands who voted no last year based on one or more of these three reasons will be able to see the huge compromises that have been made in reviewing and putting together this new referendum. The new referendum still meets the needs of the current projected student enrollment increases, and with your support will bring us one step closer to putting the educational needs of the children of our community first once again. 

Tracey Spennato

Monroe