FRHSD may reassign students from Howell
Teens who live north of Route 524 could be sent to CNHS in 2009
BY TOYNETT HALL Staff Writer
The Freehold Regional High School District's enrollment over the course of the next five years is projected to remain flat before decreasing slightly in the 2012-13 school year, according to a report prepared by Stan Slachetka of T&M Associates, Middletown.

Slachetka presented his findings during a meeting of the FRHSD Board of Education on June 16 at Freehold High School, Freehold Borough.

There are six high schools and eight sending municipalities in the FRHSD.

According to Slachetka, most of the projected high school enrollments are in a "pretty steady state over the next five years" with the exception of Colts Neck and Howell high schools.

Slachetka said the situation at Colts Neck and at Howell could require a change in boundary lines for the sending areas that are assigned to each high school. According to Slachetka's report, the district's total enrollment currently stands at 11,756 pupils.

"Over the next five years, enrollment will remain steady, with a slight decrease occurring in the 2012-13 school year. This is a result of declining rates in residential activity which started in 2001, post-Sept. 11. Residential development has the biggest impact on enrollment," Slachetka told the board.

One of the primary methodologies used in assisting with the enrollment projections is called geocoding. This method gives the location and address of students in kindergarten through 12th grade and helps in determining where students are coming from, according to Slachetka.

One of the most significant findings in his report revealed that Howell High School's enrollment will continue to grow, before peaking during the 2010-11 school year, while the enrollment at Colts Neck High School will continue to decline if no changes in the attendance areas are made by the board.

In order to balance the future enrollment among all six schools, Slachetka suggested changes in the attendance area boundary lines that could come into effect at the start of the 2009-10 school year when new high school students from Howell who live north of Route 524 between Five Points and Merrick roads would be assigned to attend Colts Neck High School, creating an exodus of about 90 pupils per year from the number that would otherwise have been assigned to Howell High School.

FRHSD administrators have said that no student who is presently in high school would be reassigned to a different school. According to board policy, if a change is to be made that would become effective in September 2009, the board will make that decision by September 2008.

Some board members expressed their displeasure with Slachetka's findings and called the impact "disruptive."

Board member Joan Leimbach, one of two Howell representatives on the panel, said, "This could be really disruptive to the community. This will be the fourth change (in attendance area assignments) in 12 years."

Leimbach said the act of balancing enrollment among the district's six schools would be a hard feat. However, she sees it as the best option.

"If our goal is a flat enrollment, then that's the best thing," she said.

Board member Diana Cappiello of Englishtown said whatever action the board takes will be disruptive in some way.

"I am not happy with the numbers that we see in Howell High School. I understand the difficulty, but I am not happy," she said. "I understand the dilemma, but I want to see another alternative. Whatever we do will be disruptive."

Slachetka said the information is based primarily on projected future development activity.

"We mapped out the future development activity. We used geocoding, which is a very powerful tool to evaluate the changes in the district. There are significant clusters to the south of Route 524. We are trying to play that fine line as far as we can. The Route 524 boundary was the real logical break point. Anything to the south of that would have a much larger impact," Slachetka said.

He said predicting enrollments is not a perfect science.

"We tried our best to not create a significant disruption. In the long term, the level of development we saw in the 1980s and 1990s will not come back to those levels over a period of time," he told the board.

Slachetka said baby boomers and the current generation called the "millennials" are looking for more urban, vibrant accommodations and not necessarily single-family homes. The single-family market may take a while to fully recover, possibly not until the millennials are ready to buy their first single-family home, he explained.

The report Slachetka provided to the board does not take into account the possibility that current military housing at Naval Weapons Station Earle could become civilian housing. Depending on which school district is responsible for that housing, students could enter the FRHSD from the Earle housing.

The housing is in Colts Neck, but the children of military personnel are currently educated in the neighboring Tinton Falls School District.

Slachetka told the board and the FRHSD administrators that situation is something that should be watched.

"If (the military housing) was released for private use, we would treat Earle as any new development being built, with an immediate impact on early grade levels and the impact on the high school district coming later," Slachetka said.