BOE member: keep PLC open BRICK TOWNSHIP - Board of Education member Daniel Woska remembers when the district's Primary Learning Center (PLC) was just a blueprint. And he also remembers when visitors from other school districts came to look at the PLC, which was considered a state-of-the-art facility after it opened 11 years ago. "It was a model school," said Woska, who was a member of the board's buildings and grounds committee back then. "A showplace." Woska was one of two board members who voted against "Option B," a budget measure designed to address a $3.5 million shortfall in the 2008-09 school year at a board meeting last week. Board member Virginia Reinhold cast the other dissenting vote. The board voted 5 to 2 to close both the Primary Learning Center and the Laurelton School on Route 88. Preschool and kindergarten students from the PLC will go to their respective home schools instead. Specialneeds students from the Laurelton School will go to the PLC. The PLC has wide hallways and kid-sized bathrooms to accommodate the district's youngest students. It can hold up to 950 students, Woska said. The building, which fronts on Chambers Bridge Road, has separate sections for each of the respective elementary schools - Drum Point, Lanes Mill, Emma Havens Young, Midstreams, Osbornville and Herbertsville. "The classrooms are broken down by school," he said. "Kids are still with the kids that live in their neighborhood and would move on to their elementary schools. It's a shame to take that building and convert it into anything else." Woska thinks there are better ways to deal with the district's budget shortfall and still keep the PLC open for its intended purpose. "I think there has to be a better way for $800,000 to be saved," he said. The district could eliminate a new assistant superintendent position and a new security director position, for starters. "I think the township has competent people in their police department to monitor our schools part time," he said. "I don't think we should go out and hire anybody else. Who knows our town better than one of our own police officers." He's also concerned up what might happen is the district is mandated to go to a full-day kindergarten in the future. "Why close a building that is made just for that and overcrowd the current elementary schools?" he said. Woska also takes issue with a 2007 consultant's report that detailed the district's declining enrollment. Statistical Forecasting, Secaucus, predicted that enrollment would continue to drop because of a decline in the birth rate, increases in the median home price and a lack of available land for future building. Woska said the report did not take into account the number of middle-age homeowners who no longer have children in district schools or living at home. "I see people like myself, with five kids, who have bigger, four-bedroom homes who haven't moved yet," he said. " "If these people sell their homes, who else is going to move into these homes? People with two, three, or four kids. When this turnover comes, it's something a demographer hasn't really planned for. I think that could change the climate very quickly." The Laurelton School, which opened in 1934, is the oldest school still in use in Brick. The Osbornville School, which was constructed in the same style, opened in 1938, township historian Gene Donatiello said. - Patricia A. MIller