School board stands pat on ’06 attendance areas
BY DAVE BENJAMIN
Staff Writer

With the Marlboro High School media center filled with parents and other residents, mostly from Howell, the Freehold Regional High School District Board of Education voted not to review the issue of student movement again.

“I urge you to reconsider this redistricting,” said Brad Birnbaum, of Howell, during the public portion of the Dec. 12 board meeting in Marlboro.

Birnbaum said everyone is being asked to do their fair share, but all municipalities are not paying the same taxes. He also questioned the time required for some students to ride the bus to school.

Other speakers during the public comment portion of the meeting asked to have the FRHSD newsletter sent to the homes and/or parents of all eighth-graders in the region so they could become more involved.

Another resident asked district administrators to consider the cost of fuel because he believed there are bus routes that are redundant.

Howell resident Debbie Charette, who has a special needs son attending Marlboro High School, said she thought the other residents were being disrespectful to the board.

“Welcome to my world, of having to have my child relocated,” Charette said. “You’re sitting here viewing people that work very diligently, seriously and wholeheartedly to make sure all of our students are accommodated. I am a Howell resident and I think in some ways you are being very disrespectful. The people sitting before you really have our kids at heart.”

Others said they had the right to criticize the board.

Joyce Maltese, whose daughter will be affected by the board’s decision about school assignment, said she could not tell her daughter that the decision was made in her best interest.

Board member Terry Kraft of Howell said he questioned the results provided by the district’s demographer.

“I did not pick him,” Kraft said. “I am asking my colleagues at this time to reconsider the action that was done. We should get all the different information and if necessary we [should] wait another year.”

“This is not an easy issue,” Superintendent of Schools James Wasser said. “If you do nothing, Colts Neck High School, which has Howell students as well as every other municipality in the region, will be pushing 1,950 to 2,000 students in September 2006. I don’t think that’s fair to any of the students regardless of whether it’s Howell, Farmingdale, Englishtown or Manalapan. The building was not built for 2,000 students.”

Wasser said Colts Neck presently has 1,777 students. The board recently voted to assign some eighth-graders who live in Howell — and who would have gone to Colts Neck under previous attendance boundaries — to instead attend Howell High School in September 2006.

The move has not sat well with some residents of Howell who maintain that areas of Howell are redistricted more frequently than other sending communities in the FRHSD.

“Colts Neck can be pushed to maybe 1,800,” said the superintendent. “When you start pushing 1,900 and maybe 2,000, you’ll see safety problems. You’ll see overcrowdedness. So, I can not recommend that this board does anything for 2006.”

The second school involved is Freehold Township High School.

“Historically, [Freehold Township students] have been split between Freehold Township and Freehold Borough,” said Wasser. “At one time there were more [students from Howell] in Freehold Township High School than there were [students from Freehold Township]. The people in Freehold Township were irked about it at that time, but they said it brought a bit of diversity to their building and that is the beauty of this regional [district].”

The superintendent said when Manalapan High School was overcrowded a few years ago, adjustments were made and some students from Manalapan were assigned to attend Freehold Township. The board has since voted to return some parts of Manalapan, and all of Englishtown, to the Manalapan High School sending area.

“If you do nothing at all, Freehold Township will be pushing almost 2,400 students,” Wasser said. “You could empty this audience out and the mayor and town council will come back with a different section of Howell” that is upset.

The superintendent said he disagreed with Kraft.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” said Wasser, who noted that the district has had five demographers over the years. “Fire this one too and get a sixth one. I don’t think it was done maliciously. I think it was an omission that was left out. We tried to accommodate the public concerns and there is no doubt that Howell is not overcrowded.”

Howell and Manalapan are presently under capacity, Wasser said.

Ilse Whisner, public information officer for the district, said Manalapan and Howell have the most empty seats in the district at the present time with about 300 seats available in each school.

“Every one of the demographers was close to where they should be,” said Wasser. “It’s not just pure numbers. When people look at it, if you add in the learning centers you get one number. If you take them out, you get another number. If you put special education in, you get another number. Take it out, you get another.”

More comments came from board members.

Repeating a comment he made at a previous meeting, board member Christopher Placitella of Colts Neck said, “I think the biggest losers in the process are not the Howell kids. It’s the Colts Neck kids, because the best thing that ever happened to the Colts Neck school was having the Howell kids in that school. So, on a basic premise I’m against moving the kids. But the decision I have to make is based on the whole [district].”

Board member Kathie Lavin of Farmingdale, commenting about the enrollment at Howell, said she has three sons who went to Howell and never heard them say they had to stand through their lunch period.

Board member Bunny Hammer of Freehold Borough said she was concerned with the overcrowding at Freehold High School. Hammer said the board has to take a more realistic look at the capacity of the schools.

“I think we have to look at the whole district again,” Hammer said.

Board member Bonnie Rosenwald of Marlboro said the board worked hard for seven months on an updated attendance area plan.

“You’re not going to put a plan aside when we have two schools in immediate jeopardy for next year [2006-07],” Rosenwald said. “You cannot have Colts Neck with 2,000 students. It is an accident waiting to happen. It is dangerous.”

Board member Ron Lawson of Howell said he believed the administration did the best job possible in terms of assigning students to the district’s six high schools.

“We make the decisions that we feel are in the best interest of 12,000 kids,” Lawson said. “That’s what we do. I have not yet seen one piece of hard data that says we screwed it up. Not one piece. For that reason I am not going to vote to change what we’ve done. We’ll look at it next year” to see if a change is needed.

Board members then voted to reconsider their previous decision relative to attendance areas for the 2006-07 school year. Hammer and Kraft voted to reconsider the decision. Diana Cappiello of Englishtown, Chia Whitehouse of Freehold Township, board President Patricia Horvath of Manalapan, Lavin, Lawson, Placitella and Rosenwald voted not to reconsider the decision, meaning the board’s previous decision remained in place.