Montclair voting on $188M bond for school renovations to protect 'reputation of our town'

In just over a week, the outcome of Montclair’s $188 million school bond proposal will be decided.

The stakes are high. The town’s 11 school buildings, with an average age of 99, are in dire straits. From the 2018 stairway collapse at the high school to the yearlong district closure during COVID, due to a lack of HVAC and working windows and sinks, to leaking roofs and broken boilers, no one is denying that improvements are desperately needed.

According to project architect Will Ross, some of the many proposed improvements are:

• new high-efficiency air conditioning units and boilers and the electric upgrades to support them in all buildings and new insulated roofs and interactive smartboards districtwide.

• upgrades at the high school, including a new auditorium; updated equipment and fixtures for science classrooms and culinary, industrial, practical and fine arts rooms; new windows and sports fields renovations.

• new music rooms, a new gym and a new playground at Hillside Elementary.

• new site drainage, communication and security systems at Glenfield Middle School.

A preliminary cost breakdown allocates $76 million for the new HVAC and roof work; $45 million for the high school upgrades; $27 million to update district science classrooms, and $25 million for Glenfield Middle School.

At a recent Board of Education information session, resident Christina Martinez said she supports the bond even though her children will not benefit. “My oldest was in high school when the stairs collapsed; my other son plays JV soccer, and the other teams laughed at us and the kids tripped on the fields. It’s a hazard,” she said. “Kids in the gym and in the orchestra have only a fan blowing hot air and try not to pass out, and it’s the same in the classrooms.”

At his recent town hall, Councilor Peter Yacobellis presented slides showing before-and-after photos contrasting dark, drab classrooms with crumbling plaster ceilings to renovated ones.

“Frankly, it’s shocking to me that this is even a question,” he said. “Do our kids not deserve this beautiful, bright, open, airy, safe-with-clean-air-to-breathe space?”

But some residents have sticker shock. On top of a tax bill that is already one of the highest in the country, the owner of a median-priced Montclair home would pay an average of$732 in additional taxes every year for 24 years to pay off the bond.

If approved, the project is expected to begin this summer and be completed by 2029.

Martinez argued that there are costs to taxpayers in not doing the work.

“What is the impact on property values and the reputation of our town if the schools are falling down?” she asked. “If our schools system goes down, our community will decay.” 

Board of Education member Eric Scherzer said that for the average household, the cost of the bond is $2 a day. “You can’t even buy a cup of coffee for that,” he said.

Yacobellis said studies show that similar bonds increase property values by about 6%. “Montclair has this incredible reputation that is rooted in part on the schools. If we don’t fix these buildings and invest in 100-year-old infrastructure, I really fear that the lure of Montclair will wear off and have an impact on our property values.”

Advocates say the time is right. The state announced last month that it will chip in nearly 32% of the total cost, an amount that is more than expected.

The state varies the type of bonds it supports from year to year, Scherzer said. “If voters don’t approve this bond, we may lose our opportunity for this type of project,” he said.

Parent Andrew Gideon said, “If we don’t do the work now, we’re likely to regret it, either because of a lack of state funding or another catastrophic failure in the schools. We have to make the investment and consider how much we’ll save on maintenance and insurance, and what it would cost to continue as we are.”

Still, the passage of the ballot measure is not a slam dunk. Yacobellis said he’s worried that “there is a silent ‘no’ vote” and urged constituents to educate their friends and neighbors on the importance of passing it.

“I am begging you, Montclair: Vote ‘yes’ for this bond,” he said.

Learning benefits

To Schools Superintendent Jonathan Ponds, it’s all about the effect the upgrades would have on student learning. At a recent information session, he said classrooms that are conducive to learning correlate to a 5% increase in academic scores.

The opposite is true also: When students are uncomfortable, learning nosedives. An example is classroom temperatures: Without functioning boilers and air conditioning, students are hot in the warmer months and cold in the winter. “Our contractors can’t fix these antiquated systems because the parts don’t exist anymore,” he said.

“We have children with asthma,” Ponds said. “Not having HVAC is difficult to manage and unsafe.”

New boilers, combined with new insulated roofs and windows, would also save the district “a lot in energy costs. We’ll be able to conserve the heat and cool in our new buildings,” he said.

Also crucial to learning is bringing Montclair’s buildings into the 21st century, said school board member Priscilla Church. “They haven’t sustained the changes that have come about in education,” she said.

Classrooms should have interactive white boards with internet capabilities to bring lessons alive and address different learning styles; science and practical arts rooms need computer capabilities, she said. “Auto mechanics need to be able to do computer diagnostics; we need to offer all students, whether they’re bound for college or the workforce, what they need to be successful in their futures,” Church said.

Simply walking into a classroom with shiny floors and ceilings that don’t have water marks aids the learning of children, who spend the bulk of their waking hours in these spaces, Ponds said.

Church asked parents to consider their children’s teachers. “It always amazes me that despite the facilities, we still have a very good reputation: Kids are still excited about learning, and parents are still satisfied with the education their children are getting. That’s because of the efforts of our wonderful staff, which put forth what their students need.

“It is time for us now to give them the facilities that are going to aid them in this,” she said.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Montclair NJ voters to decide $188 million school bond proposal