By Wendy Greenberg
Parents in Hillsborough School District are anxiously waiting to learn where their elementary-age children will attend school in the fall, as the district mulls three redistricting plans that coincide with implementing a full-day kindergarten.
The announcement of which plan the district will adopt may come at the Monday, November 24 School Board meeting, or it might be December 22, said Superintendent Michael Volpe.
The district plans to inform families of their new school assignments immediately after spring break, states a notice from Volpe on the district website.
Parents, guardians, and interested residents have been attending informational meetings (one on October 16 and two on November 13) to meet the district’s goal of communicating with parents by the end of the school semester, and then embarking on a plan to have full-day kindergarten launch for the 2026-2027 school year. Full-day kindergarten is tied to redistricting because of space needs. Hillsborough is one of nine New Jersey school districts that does not currently provide full-day kindergarten, but New Jersey has mandated that all districts implement full-day kindergarten by 2029.
The overriding concern of parents who attended the meetings seemed to be that students have some kind of transition, and Volpe said the district intends to have transitional activities in the spring. “We’re doing this in the most kid-centered and humanistic way,” he said in a phone interview.
While parents are eager to learn what school their child is going to attend, the district hopes they understand there is a “scope and sequence” behind the decision.
What Volpe is most proud of, through the year-long process, he said, is the communications aspect, so no one is caught short not knowing about the process. The district included video clips of School Board meetings in its weekly Wednesday emails, and on social media, as well as the three meetings.
At the September 19 School Board meeting, Assistant Superintendent Joel Handler gave an extensive report on redistricting, offering three plans that the district is considering. Plan 1 would be to redistrict all six K-4 schools. Plan 2 would be to develop an early childhood learning center at Triangle Elementary School, including pre-kindergarten and kindergarten. Plan 3 would be to develop a fourth grade transition school at Hillsborough Elementary School.
The redistricting will balance class sizes and school building use in the district’s six elementary schools, said Handler in his presentation, which is online at youtube.com/user/hillsboroughschools. A map of the township population surrounding each elementary school shows density at Amsterdam and Woods Road, at Triangle and Hillsborough, and at Sunnymead. He noted that Woodfern “covers about a third to almost half of Hillsborough’s land but is about a tenth, possibly even less of our elementary school population.”
The district contracted with ARCbridge of Sterling, Va., for planning services, which looked at current housing construction projects, and projected that some 243 new students are expected to enter the elementary schools via new housing in the district. Sunnymead could expect 106 new students, and Amsterdam, 68, with Triangle at 34, Woods Road at 26, and Hillsborough, 9. Sunnymead, he noted, is actually at capacity.
While trends show that the general education school population has generally decreased, the number of students in self-contained special education classrooms is increasing. This calls for different room utilization, Handler said, as some programs are allowed only up to eight students or less in a classroom.
Of the three plans, the first plan would look to increase the use of Woodfern School, and decrease enrollment at Sunnymeade and Amsterdam to allow for growth from new housing.
In Plan 2, an early childhood development center, consideration is given to the configuration of the classrooms, and locations of bathrooms, however, the district does not know how many students will be entering kindergarten next year.
The challenges of Plan 3, a fourth grade transition school, is that students would enter a new school in fourth grade, and again in a year to middle school, among other challenges for special education students.
“We want to send a huge thank you to everyone who came out and participated in our three community information sessions on redistricting,” wrote Volpe on the school district website at htps.us. “Your input has been incredibly valuable and will play a critical role as we move forward in the decision process regarding which of the three proposed options we will adopt.”