Grants fund upgrades for local school districts

Grants fund upgrades for local school districts
Funds offset costs for Monmouth Regional and Ocean Twp. districts
BY KENNY WALTER Staff Writer

TINTON FALLS — Grants to two Monmouth County school districts will pay for 40 percent of the cost of projects that will upgrade school facilities.

Both the Monmouth Regional High School District and Ocean Township School District were approved for grant funds last month from the New Jersey Schools DevelopmentAuthority Regular Operating District grant program to help relieve the burden of projects on local taxpayers for various projects.

Monmouth Regional received $822,404 from the state toward the $2 million cost of projects carried out this summer.

The Ocean Township School District received $192,720 from the state to complete a $481,800 project to replace piping at the intermediate school and to replace the boiler at the Wanamassa School.

According to Monmouth Regional district Business Administrator Maria Parry, the projects are under way and include replacing both locker rooms and the windows in one of the wings.

“The projects are 98 percent done,” she said recently. “Hopefully, they’ll be done by the end of August.”

Parry said the locker rooms were in poor condition.

“The locker rooms were 50 years old,” she said. “The plumbing didn’t work in one of the locker rooms, and the other locker room was the original girls’ locker room that [was] turned into a boys’ locker room.”

Parry also said the old windows were a safety risk for students.

“The windows were the original windows to the building that were about 50 years old,” she said. “They were not energy efficient, they weren’t insulated.

“I had floor-to-ceiling windows, so I always had a safety issue if someone accidentally kicked the glass.”

Parry said she expects the new windows to save the district money on heating bills.

“Now the windows are energy efficient, they are not floor-to-ceiling windows, they are half-windows,” she said. “They will re- tain the heat from the sun, so I’ll be able to not use as much heat in some of the hallways.

“I’m not going to save millions of dollars, but I will have savings.”

Parry said the district would still have done the work without the funds from the state, but the upgrade of both locker rooms may not have been done.

“This has just been a bonus that I’ve been able to get 40 percent back of the cost of the project from the state,” she said.

Parry said the SDA has been in existence since about 2000, but this is the first time Monmouth Regional has applied for funding.

She said one project that isn’t being supported by the state is replacing bleachers.

“They have certain projects that are excluded,” she said. “We are putting in new bleachers, and the bleachers are excluded.”

Parry said the district started the process of preparing an application in January 2009 and sent in the application in November of last year.

For a time, she said, there was some doubt about whether or not the district would receive the grant money.

“We had found out in December that we were possibly not going to get the grant monies,” she said. “It was a big concern on my end.

“I was very pleased to hear in April or May that the state did approve the grants.”

Parry added that reimbursement by the state involves a lot of paperwork.

“I’m in the process of putting in for reimbursement of the 40 percent share from the state, so right now I’m knee-deep in paperwork,” she said.

Ocean Township School District Business Administrator Ken Jannarone said the work there has already been completed.

He also said the work was necessary and would have been done even without the grant.

“We had an old boiler and piping that needed to be replaced,” Jannarone said. “For these necessary projects to be able to receive additional funds from the state to offset local costs is pretty big.’

According to the SDA, the grant program is part of a $50.3 million investment made available by the sale of $500 million in bonds by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

Contact Kenny Walter at

kwalter@gmnews.com.





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