$3M Grant To Pay For New Heating, AC At 2 Point Pleasant Schools

POINT PLEASANT, NJ — Nellie Bennett and Ocean Road elementary schools are set to receive new unit ventilators for heating and air conditioning, funded primarily by a $3 million grant from the state.

The grant, awarded to the district through the “School and Small Business Ventilation and Energy Efficiency Verification and Repair Program,” under the authority of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, is slated to pay for most of the project.

The district has awarded a $4.1 million contract to Comfort Mechanical Corp. for the installation of the unit ventilators, after what district officials said was a multi-month bid process.

Of the total grant, $1,575,525 is for the Nellie F. Bennett Elementary project, and $1,499,475 is dedicated to the Ocean Road project, the district said.

"District administrators and central office personnel, in collaboration with our facilities department, have been working on securing this funding since October," Superintendent Adam Angelozzi said. The grant application was compiled with assistance from Netta Architects and Concord Engineering Group, the district said.

Angelozzi said the grant will help with capital projects, but "it does not fix the current state funding formula’s continued strain on our budget for the next two budget cycles, which include the 2023-2024 school year and the 2024-2025 school year."

Point Pleasant is slated to have $254,851 cut from the state school aid it received in the 2022-23 school year, under state figures released following Gov. Phil Murphy's budget address earlier this month.

The Point Pleasant district received $3,822,214 in the 2022-23 school year, and is slated to receive $3,567,363 for 2023-24, a 6.67 percent decrease, according to the education department, because of S2, the state law that mandated reductions in funding for some school districts based on what the state says is their failure to pay their fair share of property taxes to support their schools.

The project will improve ventilation at both schools, an adds air conditioning to all of the classrooms for students in pre-K through fifth grade, "which creates a more hospitable environment for teaching and learning in the early fall and late spring months," the district said.

It also gives the district the possibility of offering additional summer enrichment programs, along with support, recreation, and extracurricular programs, officials said.