School District Appears To Be Moving Forward With Sale Of LBI Grade School

by Steve Moran

To quote Winston Churchill, the plans for the merging of the two grade schools in the Long Beach Island Consolidated School District remains “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

Emerging from a closed session prior to Tuesday night’s public meeting with at least one unidentified architect, School Board President Jennifer Bott again opened with the consolidation timeline presented at last week’s meeting. It concluded the two schools, LBI Grade School in Ship Bottom (K-2) and Ethel Jacobsen School (3-6) in Surf City should become one school.

In the presentation, Bott said the school board had received “the highest bid to date,” for the purchase of the LBI School property this past January. On both occasions, she did not disclose any details or the identity of the bidder.

Earlier Tuesday, former board member Rick McDonough posted on the Ship Bottom Update Facebook page he moderates that the Toll Brothers, a luxury home building company working around the country, was the purchaser and planning for 30 plus homes on the LBI School site.

Interim District Administrator and Board Secretary Enrico Siano said Wednesday morning he could not comment on whether or not the Toll Brothers were the prospective buyers. There is a “letter of intent” in front of the board, but no formal agreement, he said.

Because of that and on the advice of the board attorney, Siano said he could not identify or confirm the “person or persons” who sent the letter.

Following the presentation, Bott read a letter from Surf City Mayor Leonard Connors and the borough council asking the school district to again consider selling the Jacobsen School property back to them for “no more than $2.5M.” The borough had deeded the land for the construction of the school, with the restriction that they had the first right to buy it back.

Should the sale of the LBI School go through the preliminary plan has been to expand the Jacobsen School on that site and the adjacent lot that lies in Ship Bottom.

Bott said she and board members had met with or spoken to the mayors of four, Barnegat Light, Harvey Cedars, Ship Bottom and Surf City, of the five municipalities sending students to the schools earlier in the day and had met with Long Beach Township Mayor Joseph Mancini previously.

Again, Bott disclosed no details. Last week the mayors had been given a detailed engineering report regarding the estimated cost of repairing and maintaining the two schools. It said the LBI School site needed more than $3M in repairs. The report also recommended consolidation.

Bott then said that the consolidation matter was undergoing a serious discussion on all levels, including with prospective buyers in order for them to properly plan for the beginning of the next school year in September.

However, shortly after the, board approved a $750,000 contract to reinforce the concrete I-beams underneath the LBI Grade School for safety reason as detailed in the engineer’s report.

When asked by a resident in the public session if that meant the school would remain open for the full school year, or if students could be pulled out if the sale went through, Bott only said they would try to do “whatever least impacted” the children.

Also in the public session, McDonough and others asked for a future “open public forum” to include municipal officials before any plans are finalized.

“I think we all know where this is going,” he said. “We just want a chance to be informed and be heard.”

Image: LBI Grade School in Ship Bottom