MANALAPAN, NJ — The Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District has officially broken ground for a new addition to Manalapan-Englishtown Middle School (MEMS) to help relocate their administrative offices.
The groundbreaking ceremony, which took place on Aug. 6 at 10 a.m., featured remarks from Superintendent Nicole Santora, Board of Education members, and more as they prepared to break ground at the middle school for the offices' relocation.
The groundbreaking came after the district’s $115.4 million bond referendum passed in November, which called for the construction of a new addition to MEMS and relocation of the administrative offices currently located on 54 Main Street.
According to district officials, maintaining the administration building on Main Street would have required “extensive renovations and ongoing repairs, making it neither sustainable nor fiscally responsible."
Since the current administration building would have required such extensive renovations, this led the district to include the construction of a new addition at MEMS in their referendum.
“I was first elected to the Board of Education 20 years ago in 2005,” Board Member Ryan Green said at the groundbreaking ceremony. “I remember sitting with my fellow board members in the Main Street building, in what is now Dr. Santora’s office, talking about ‘how are we going to get out of Main Street, and where might we go?’”
According to Green, there were even board members before him, in the 1990s, who discussed how they were going to move administrative offices from Main Street, making this project one roughly 30 years in the making.
Though discussions of a move from Main Street date back decades, Green said their referendum committee only began meeting in January 2023, a year-and-a-half before their referendum campaign was launched.
Once the campaign began, that's when Green said their team really came together.
"The Board of Education, our community leaders, our Communications Committee, district administrators, parents, custodians, bus drivers, support staff — everybody came together to explain to our communities why we need to do this," Green said.
Once Manalapan and Englishtown voters approved the district’s bond referendum in November 2024, district officials were able to make their dreams of moving on from Main Street a reality.
“With this move, we’ll be able to use our funds more efficiently instead of paying for repairs, upgrades, and maintenance on an older building,” Santora said at the groundbreaking ceremony. “Those funds can now directly benefit our students. Additionally, our administration is now exactly where they should be: with our students, with our faculty at a school building."
“Thank you to all the residents of Manalapan and Englishtown who answered the call when we asked for your support,” Santora said. “Manalapan-Englishtown Regional Schools would not have been able to get this amount of critical work done in this short amount of time without this bond referendum. So thank you."
To watch a full recording of the groundbreaking ceremony, you can click here.
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