Rust never sleeps and FTS is covered in it. Take a closer look. On doors, panels, down stouts, its everywhere on the outside of the school. Loudspeakers hang by their wires, caution tape dangles from fences & machines, and cracks & layers of dirt stain the steps of the historic entrance. These are telltale signs of neglect and if the outside is covered in it, just consider the inside.
Franklin Township Board of Education released its five-year Long-Range Facilities Plan last year. It lists all capital improvements needed at the school to keep our ship from falling apart. The total amount they predicted to be needed was upwards of $19M. We can debate all those listed needs, the costs attached, and the research preformed, but according to the BoE, this was what will be necessary in the next five years to get things done right.
To address these concerns, the BoE continued a meeting after a 90-minute executive session to discuss a reduced $12M bond referendum to begin to address these problems to an audience that left for the evening. This alone would have only funded one year of their own plan. The BoE’s architect firm H2M made a presentation at the beginning of the meeting with a single option of immediately replacing all air handlers and air quality systems. Their recommendation was based on their prior projects and the systems nearing the end of their recommended operational life. H2M made no reference to engaging companies specializing in these types of equipment to determine if alternative ideas might be more beneficial for taxpayers & students, such as a phased approach to replacing systems. H2M predicted the cost would be $8M in one go and the BOE labeled it as ‘High Priority’ on their LRP.
In the end, the FTS Board of Education decided to drop all funding for these projects & most others to request a $2.8M bond instead. (or less than 15% of the funds needed for their own LRP plan.) Funds requested will go towards four projects: 1) Parking lot improvements because an accident on Quakertown Road is imminent in ongoing configuration and it can’t be ignored any longer. 2) Revamp nursing office because nurses keep quitting, the room fails state requirements, and it can’t be ignored any longer. 3) An emergency generator because the lights keep going out and it can’t be ignored any longer. Then lastly 4) Bathrooms for PreK rooms because the state will pull funding for that program if we continue to ignore the need any longer. But that’s it. (See attachment C) The current plan for other expenses is most likely to pay another consultant company to perform the same evaluation to see if the first one was actually accurate. As of yet still no explanation has been offered to the community on why the bond amount has been slashed, nor the probable impact to the operating budget of deferring the replacement of the air handler & air quality units that are failing.
Our point is this, there is no strategic plan. Not for students or taxpayers. If the $2.8M bond is approved this year, there will most certainly be a $8-9M bond next year to address the air handler issues when they undoubtedly breakdown again in spring without an actionable plan. Resulting once more in our principal heading to Stop & Shop for donations of cold water bottles to help make students comfortable for the foreseeable future until remedied. That must be followed by an another $9-10M bond within the next three years if the FTS Broad of Education is serious about their own ‘needs’ report.
The $2.8M bond is the equivalent of an oil change on a car needing a new engine and the plan seems to be to shrink the bond amount to what the BoE think taxpayers will comfortably swallow rather than working together with the community to address our real needs in the long run. (More on that in future posts.) There’s a very good chance that because of the way they are parsing out & not messaging these bond requests, very little or nothing in terms of capital investments (fixes) will get done for years only exacerbating the issues in the school and many of the items on 2024-29 LRP are undone repair projects that date back beyond 2021. (Attachment D) A real long term strategic plan must be created and followed so the students, teachers, facilities staff & principal have the best to work with and so taxpayers can properly anticipate their own long range property tax costs.
None of this addresses our practically unplayable outdoor basketball court, the 3x average school tax levy increase for ‘excess costs’, and the possible situation that if the basement floods again the school’s insurance company will not pay for it. This ship is literally taking on water and there’s bubblegum over it… No one from the BoE seems to be communicating these things to the community or planning for it. This assertion is further supported by the Board of Education’s own meeting minutes stating that the AD HOC (Strategic Planning) committee presented ‘No Updates’ or ‘Did Not Meet’ at every meeting over the past three years except twice leading up to these decisions. (Attachment E)
If we appear angry at board of education meetings, it’s because we are. Three minutes is not nearly enough time for us to cover years of mismanagement and any of our attempts to discuss all matters privately with administration were dismissed by telling us FTS was a Greatschool™. Normal attempts to request supporting information are ignored, OPRA requests are questionably deflected or hit with massive charges. The way all business is conducted at FTS exposes the school and Board of Education to lawsuits costing even more taxpayer dollars. A fix is needed for the rust, it cannot be ignored any longer.
