An Important Negotiations Reminder to Business Administrators

NJSBA Announces Sale of Northern Field Office

NJSBA Board of Directors to Meet

Audit Questions DOE Oversight

School Violence Edges Up Slightly

Obituary: Wesley Lance, an Author of New Jersey’s Constitution

Obituary: Dr. Boyle, Somerset ESC Superintendent

NJSBA on the Air

Workshop 2007—Ethics Do’s and Don’ts

Calendar

Click here for a pdf version of this issue of School Board Notes

NJSBA President Kevin E. Ciak has announced the pending sale of the Association’s West Caldwell field office. The sale of the northern office is an integral part of a plan, approved by the Board of Directors in May, to finance the construction of a new headquarters and training center. Also on the market are the Association’s two other field offices in Manalapan and Voorhees Township and its current headquarters in Trenton.

Closing on the sale of the West Caldwell facility is anticipated in October. The selling price is $462,500.

No Service Disruption “Before the closing, the northern field office staff will begin alternating their time between home offices and the Trenton headquarters—that is, when they’re not providing services in district,” Ciak explained to members of the Board of Directors in may. “We anticipate no disruption in direct services to boards.

“NJSBA’s goal is to expand, rather than diminish, direct services to boards,” Ciak noted. “Our field service representatives do their most essential work in-district. And allowing them to work out of home offices, with periodic visits to the headquarters, will not detract from the provision of direct services.”

Ciak pointed to February’s relocation of the Central Field Office staff to home offices and Trenton, which presented no disruption of services.

New Headquarters In May 2007, the Board of Directors approved plans for the construction of a 52,000-square-foot office building and training center. The building will include modern meeting space for NJSBA training programs and will have distance-learning capabilities.

Groundbreaking is expected in March 2008, with construction to be completed in the summer of 2009. The estimated cost is $18 million.

Funding the Project To fund the project, the Board of Directors in May voted to place the West Caldwell and Voorhees properties on the market ahead of schedule. Funding for the new facility will draw on the proceeds from the sale of all current property (approximately $4 million), money previously transferred into capital reserve from surplus ($6.5 million), and financing ($7.5 million).

The annual cost of carrying the mortgage on the new building will be approximately $500,000.

To cover the cost, NJSBA will take several steps, including: increasing non-member revenue from Annual Workshop and from other programs and services and developing new fee-based services.

“The plan to build and finance the new facility does not involve an increase in dues or a reduction in services,” said Ciak.

Decision to Build From the start, the plan to build a new headquarters has been member driven. NJSBA’s 2005-2008 Long Range Plan—a blueprint for the Association that involved extensive input from the membership—calls for “a state-of-the-art headquarters building that is accessible to the membership.”

To meet this goal, the Association Board of Directors had to decide to build a new facility or to renovate our current headquarters.

Build versus Renovate The final decision—to buy land and build a new facility, rather than renovate—followed months of research by an eight-member committee of local school board members. The ad hoc Facilities Committee found that:

• Renovations needed to keep the Trenton headquarters in operation would not be a cost-effective use of Association funds; and
  
  
• The structure of the existing building, and its extremely limited parking capacity, could not meet NJSBA’s future membership service needs.

Land Purchase The Board of Directors approved the Facilities Committee recommendation to buy land and build. And in the spring of 2006, the board authorized the purchase of 10 acres, located three miles from the New Jersey Turnpike, in Hamilton Township, Mercer County. NJSBA closed on the land for $1.6 million in the fall of 2006. The money to purchase the land came from a capital reserve account funded through transfers from surplus.