Ridgewood reserve funds going toward RHS Learning Commons
Tuesday March 5, 2013, 10:54 AM
BY LAURA HERZOG
STAFF WRITER
The Ridgewood News
The district’s capital reserve account is nearly depleted now that the Board of Education (BOE) has approved funding about $170,000 of work for the high school’s library renovation and expanding technology use.
Prior to this use, the account was most recently tapped into in November to provide about $400,000 to support the Learning Commons project.
But the fund may not be depleted for long, Superintendent Daniel Fishbein said in an interview Tuesday. By the end of the year, the account, which is held for future capital projects and is comprised of unexpended funds, may be replenished somewhat.
“We’ll see at the end of the school year,” he said. “We are using it, but there may be an opportunity to generate funds … When we finish our capital projects for this year, [we’ll see if] there is money left over.”
While I actually believe the learning commons is a good idea, this brings several questions to mind. Number 1 – how much extra money is built into the school budget each year such that they have an extra $400k to put into this project and aren’t terribly concerned about depleting the funds, and two, how did the existing library become so obsolete 2 years after we were forced to spend $40mm updating facilities, including turfing the field? Was this considered when those renovations were proposed? Another example of their long term planning abilities. This project was sold as being funded by donations, and yet the school district has donated the lions share.
I thought that the reserve fund was for unexpected expenses. If the boe wanted to fund the learning commons they should have budgeted for it.
I would rather see money spent on this than on sports fields.