For school protesters, hardly the end of the road Hundreds visit site of halted construction to stress need for roomier Phillipsburg High Sunday, April 22, 2007 • BY MIKE FRASSINELLI • Star-Ledger Staff Hundreds of parents, teachers and students gathered yesterday along a paved road to nowhere in Warren County, shouting "Where's our high school?" and carrying signs with messages such as "31 Trailers and Counting." Less than a mile away sat New Jersey's largest trailer park high school, where a record 31 modular classrooms have been hauled in to create space in the cramped Phillipsburg School District. A new, roomier Phillipsburg High School was to be built in neighboring Lopatcong Township, but state funding dried up -- leaving only the paved road to nowhere. "We are having our own version of the Boston Tea Party," declared Assemblyman Mike Doherty (R-Warren), one of the crowd of about 500 people. Two summers ago, officials in Phillipsburg, one of the state's 31 special-needs school districts, reeled when they learned the new high school had been removed by the state's cash-strapped Schools Construction Corp. from its list of projects. Excavators had already begun work on athletic fields and the access road. The 325,000-square-foot, $95 million high school -- to be built on Roseberry Street and Belvidere Road in Lopatcong Township, less than a mile from the present high school on Hillcrest Boulevard in Phillipsburg -- was expected to be ready for the 2008-09 school year. Of the 1,710 high school students at Phillipsburg, 40 percent are in trailers at any given time. "Have you ever been in the hallways? It's like Route 78 in rush hour," said Patrick Gotham, president of the school's student council. Tenth-grader Brielle DePugh had three classes in the trailers last semester, and said students who had to leave the warm trailers and go outside to change classes during the cold-winter months were susceptible to sickness. Inside, things aren't much better. "You can hear stuff really easily," DePugh said. "Sometimes there are skunks underneath -- and you can smell them really bad." Projected enrollment for September 2010 is 1,921 students. Schools Construction Corp. officials didn't attend the rally, but their chief executive officer, Scott Weiner, sent an e-mail to rally organizers saying an additional $3.25 billion has been recommended for school projects, and he was hopeful that the Phillipsburg construction project would be funded. "It is clear that the need becomes greater and greater with each day that passes and the situations at schools like Phillipsburg High School become more and more dire," Weiner wrote. Parents and teachers, chanting into megaphones and holding signs reading "Broken Promises" and "Show Us the Money," vowed to go to Trenton to fight for funding. "I'm sad when I hear people say it's a trailer park," Phillipsburg Superintendent H. Gordon Pethick said during the rally. "But the fact is, 31 trailers constitutes a trailer park -- and that is not acceptable." He added: "I was a math teacher. I will not count above 31. ... We need a new school." Pethick said the trailers have helped create a security problem, with more than 100 different entrance points at the high school now. He pointed to the horizon behind him. "Up on the top of that hill," he said, "should be our new high school." Mike Frassinelli may be reached at mfrassinelli@starledger.com or (908) 475-1218. © 2007 The Star-Ledger. Used with permission.