HILLSDALE—The architect hired by Hillsdale’s school board presented four options April 11 for repairing or replacing the century-old George G. White Middle School.
Options range in price from $25.5 million, for conduct minor renovations and mechanical upgrades, to $82.5 million to replace the school with an expanded, modern building.
Following a series of meetings with parents to solicit input, the school board will decide which option to put before voters in a ballot referendum planned for March 2023.
District trustees will decide what option to put before voters by May or June, Superintendent Robert Lombardy told Pascack Press.
Meetings for families of each local school are as follows: Smith School, Wednesday, April 27; Meadowbrook School, Monday., May 2; and George G. White Middle School, Tuesday, May 3. All sessions will be held at George G. White’s cafetorium at 6:30 p.m.
District officials suggest parents sign up online for the school meeting associated with their youngest child.
Architect Joseph Di Cara, of Di Cara Rubino of Wayne, explained the options to approximately 20 residents at the special meeting held at 6 p.m., April 11, at the Ann Blanche Smith School multi-purpose room.
About 20 residents, including Mayor John Ruocco, listened to the presentation, which was in-person only. Lombardy said the Di Cara Rubino side show would be put online following the May 3 parent forum.
Di Cara said a demographics study recently conducted showed a 12.4% increase in residents between 2020 and 2040, which might mean another 10 or 12 students in school.
However, he cautioned those figures did not include development or redevelopment underway or proposed, adding they “anticipate more” than a dozen students.
A 250-unit rental apartment complex was recently presented as the first redevelopment proposal for Hillsdale’s Patterson Street Redevelopment zone, which would be on site of a former Waste Management transfer station. (See “Four-Story Luxury Rental Complex on Former WM Site?” Pascack Press, April 11, 2022).
Di Cara said the demographics study showed seven of nine school grades project an increase over the next five years, leading to more children in middle school. He said three “main ingredients” that go into deciding what option to choose are: demographics and student projections, educational program requirements, and condition of facilities.
Since November, Lombardy said, the board has conducted due diligence studies on the Magnolia Avenue site across from the middle school, including demographics and environmental assessments.
Di Cara showed images existing in the school, including the boiler room, a safe, encapsulated “asbestos tunnel” where HVAC and mechanical systems are contained, which require HAZMAT suits worn by workers performing maintenance there.
Di Cara offered a comparison between what exists in the middle school and what is proposed in a new facility, which would be built across from the present building and cause no interruptions to student classes or learning, said officials.
The new facility (for grades 5–8) would be a mostly three-story building with a larger gymnasium, stage and changing rooms, regulation high school-court size gym, with upgraded kitchen facilities.
It would also feature a large vestibule for visitors and increased security, an art room that opens into an “outdoor learning environment,” small-group instruction rooms for smaller teaching sessions and special needs, amphitheater in the cafeteria, common areas, a culinary lab, and a second-floor multimedia center.
Moreover the new facility would provide modern, larger and more classrooms, with 43 classrooms compared to 37 now-undersized classrooms, said officials.
Di Cara said should temporary trailers be needed for student instruction if the public prefers to renovate the existing building, the trailers alone could cost an estimated $4 million to house all four grade levels as renovations were underway.
“A do-nothing or zero-cost option: that isn’t on the table,” said Lombardy. “We have to do something, the clock is ticking on the conditions of that building, particularly some of the infrastructure elements there. So something significant has to happen at the George White facility. It cannot go on another 5, 7, 10 years like it is right now,” he said. “We have to do something.”
The four options presented include a new middle school, and three options that include renovations on the existing building that offer a reduced scope of renovations at progressively lower costs.
Option 1, or a new facility, was estimated at $82.5 million, and would cost homeowners an average $1,310 yearly or $110 per month, over the period of a proposed 20-year bond.
Options 2 and 3 are “somewhat similar,” said Lombardy. Option 2 includes gym improvements and the renovation of the entire existing structure and includes new construction to expand existing classrooms and add new classrooms. Option 3 leaves the gym unchanged and includes renovations to the whole facility, plus adding some new classrooms.
Option 4 includes no new construction, but includes gutting and renovating the current facility, with no new classrooms or space added. Students would have to be educated in trailers for at least two years for options 2 and 3. Option 4 would require less time in trailers.
Option 1 allows students to remain in the current facility while a new facility is built across the street on Magnolia Avenue.
Other options would provide limited building upgrades, and new mechanical equipment such as boilers. Option 2 would provide upgrades and a bigger gym for $58.5 million; Option 3 includes a renovated school and gym but no expanded gym for $52 million, and Option 4 offers to upgrade existing facilities for an estimated $25.5 million.
After bonding for the improvements, taxpayers would pay the following: Option 2 would be $937 yearly or $78 monthly; Option 3 would be $845 yearly or $71 monthly; and Option 4 would be $400 yearly or $34 per month.
“They’re big numbers, they’re all big numbers,” said DiCara, showing the costs of four possible options available to residents. He said prices have risen dramatically in the last 30 months.
Residents in their own words
Resident Lorraine Baumann, Liberty Avenue, said officials were “oversimplifying a new building which is going to have major ramifications on our taxes.” She said homeowners were already “burdened” with local taxes, and she said she foresaw increased taxes from school children coming from a new development in River Vale going to Pascack Valley Regional High School.
“How much do you think this town can absorb in taxes? These projects have to be done in moderation. You just can’t take this major undertaking and it will have an effect on the water, the people on this street,” she said, charging local street runoff and flooding would get worse.
She said she saw “more fluff in that than education” regarding a new middle school.
Another resident, Melissa Mazza-Chiong, Highland Avenue, said she has two sons, six and eight years old, attending Meadowbrook Elementary School. Addressing Baumann, she noted all Hillsdale residents were paying high taxes living in Bergen County. She said she was in favor of a new school and recreational fields, and downplayed the tax increases.
She said that all the people buying homes in town “are looking forward to a good school for their kids” and a new facility in town.
Lombardy noted the school board was “not shoving this down anyone’s throat” and that residents get to tell them what they think of the options presented and get a final vote on one option in a referendum next year. He said the problems at the middle school “have gone on for over two decades.”
He said Hillsdale residents have an opportunity here, “not to Band-Aid a problem but to innovate and to lead and does that come with a cost? Every single option including doing nothing comes with a cost. There is no option that does not come with a cost.”