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Governor Murphy Breaks Ground on New Perth Amboy High School

09/27/2021

PERTH AMBOY – Governor Phil Murphy today joined Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, New Jersey Schools Development Authority (SDA) CEO Manuel Da Silva, Perth Amboy Public Schools Superintendent Dr. David Roman, Perth Amboy students, and state and local officials for the groundbreaking of the new Perth Amboy High School. With the engines of construction equipment roaring and dozens of construction workers busy on site, today’s event ceremoniously marked the start of the largest school construction project ever undertaken by the SDA. 
“We are committed to ensuring that every child in New Jersey has access to a high-quality education,” said Governor Murphy. “This school will not only relieve overcrowding in Perth Amboy Public Schools, but also provide a state-of-the-art facility that will foster learning and success for Perth Amboy students.”

The new Perth Amboy High School will be an approximately 576,000 square-foot, three-story facility designed to educate a maximum of 3,300 students in ninth to twelfth grades. In addition to general classrooms and science labs, the school will include specialized educational spaces such as an automotive lab, culinary arts lab, black box studio, dance studio, ROTC classroom, world languages classroom, life skills lab, and a daycare center. The new school will also be equipped with 1:1 student technology, an educational necessity now more than ever. 

“Today’s groundbreaking event for this important project is another step toward addressing the educational facility needs that exist in Perth Amboy and throughout the state,  especially those that address district-wide overcrowding,” said SDA CEO Manuel Da Silva. “The educational spaces and resources that will be provided through the construction of this new school will help to ensure Perth Amboy students and educators have the learning environment they need to succeed.” 

“Today’s groundbreaking moves us forward on the promise to ensure all of our students in New Jersey have access to the high-quality public education they need to find success,” said Assembly Speaker Craig J. Coughlin. “Twenty years in the making, not only will generations of future Perth Amboy high school students benefit from the new school’s facilities, but this construction project is going to be tremendous for the community and local economy through its creation of good paying union jobs. Alleviating the resource stress on the current high school, this is what a successful investment into our children’s futures looks like.” 
“This project will provide a new, modern facility for students in Perth Amboy,” said Kevin Duncan of the Middlesex County Building and Construction Trades Council. “The Middlesex County Building Construction and Trades Council looks forward to working with the Schools Development Authority, Donald Dinallo and General Contractor Terminal Construction Corp. to make this important project a reality.”
The $283.8 million state investment for this 21stcentury educational facility will significantly reduce district-wide overcrowding while supporting more than 2,000 construction and other jobs over the course of the project. 

The school will be built using a design-build approach. The design-build method differs from the traditional design-bid-build approach by allowing the SDA to contract with one firm for both design and construction of a school facilities project. Terminal Construction Corporation/Dinallo Construction Corporation (Joint Venture) was awarded a design-build contract for the design and construction of the new school. As part of the design-build contract, Terminal Construction Corp./Dinallo Construction Corp. is working with RSC Architects on the design. Anser Advisory is managing the project. 

As a result of SDA's commitment to building energy-efficient buildings that consider the surrounding environment, this school will be built to be LEED (United States Green Building Council – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified. 

Once completed, the school will be the sixth Capital Project built by the SDA in Perth Amboy since the inception of the school construction program in 2000. The anticipated opening of the new Perth Amboy High School is September 2024. The SDA previously invested more than $150 million in completed projects in the Perth Amboy School District, including the Rose M. Lopez Elementary School that opened in 2019.