Schools - Courier - Plainfield hopes rise with Emerson school groundbreaking

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Published in the Courier News, Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Plainfield hopes rise with school groundbreaking
$14 million Emerson Elementary project moves ahead

By CHAD WEIHRAUCH
Staff Writer

PLAINFIELD -- City officials and children came out to an empty lot in the city's East End on Tuesday evening to celebrate the long-awaited groundbreaking for the new Emerson Elementary School.

District officials received the approval late last month from the state Schools Construction Corp. that finally allowed them to go ahead with the estimated $14 million project.

"Ultimately, I guess the message was this is one school out of many," said district spokesman Louis Rivera, pointing to other building efforts the district would like to fund. "The swing schools are state-of-the-art buildings, but there's nothing like coming home and going back to your school."

Several years ago, the district outfitted the former National Starch headquarters building on West Front Street to accept students from two elementary schools. Students attend classes temporarily at the "swing school" building while repairs and construction are performed at their original school.

Clinton Elementary students were shifted to the swing school for about 18 months but returned to their renovated building last year. Students from Emerson Elementary have been at the swing school since their building was demolished in January 2005, said Michelle Curry, president of the school's parent-teacher association.

Curry said she looks forward to the completion of the new building, which is slated for September 2007.

"It's going to be good for the kids and the neighborhood to see it go up. It's going to be progress," she said.

The Schools Construction Corp. is the agency in charge of funding projects in districts across the state. It announced last July that it had run out of money and would not be able to pay for hundreds of proposed construction efforts.

But Emerson Elementary -- at about 100 years old and one of Plainfield's oldest schools -- made the cut.

Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs said finally seeing construction begin sparks new hope other projects might see the light of day. For example, the district was denied funding for a new middle-school building, something many officials have said is sorely needed because of increased enrollment.

"It means quite a bit to the district. It shows we are still working for the kids and that something positive is happening for the community," she said.

There are symbolic hopes invested in Emerson Elementary, and then there are the smaller, more direct ones.

Curry has two children, one of whom attends Emerson, and said it will be nice to have kids attend classes in their own neighborhood, instead of being bused to the swing school on the other side of the city.

"It's going to mean a lot for them to go back to their school and be close to home," she said.

Chad Weihrauch can be reached at (908) 707-3137 or cweihrau@gannett.com

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