The Strategic Plan

"It's time for the new strategic plan." No seven words evince more fear and loathing in the veteran school board member than that one short sentence. And if they don't, you're doing it wrong.

Every five to seven years, a school district will need to create a plan for the future encompassing items such as curriculum, facilities, staffing, and finances. The buzzword of the day will be "sustainable" - but that's a canard. The school district is never going out of business.

As a five-term school board member, I participated to varying degrees in three strategic plans. And let me be clear - I observed people with earnest intentions trying to steer the district in the direction they wanted it to go. I refrain from labeling their intentions as "good" because their intentions were never the same as mine.

If you are a conservative school board member attempting to represent - in the case of a town like Hillsborough - the views of at least half of the residents, you will be thwarted. The education establishment has many ways to stop you - here are a few:

• Public Input via Email - The superintendent will solicit input from the public in an attempt to learn what their priorities are. The "public" who submit their ideas will consist overwhelmingly of teachers and other school employees.
• Public Forums - The board will hold several public forums and workshops. These will be attended largely by teachers, et. al. (see above).
• Board Members Roundtable  - The superintendent may suggest principals, supervisors, high-level administrators, and board members break into groups to discuss priorities. Board members will be outnumbered three to one in each group.

As the Hillsborough school district works through its strategic plan this year, pay attention to what you are hearing. Will there be even one item that might satisfy a traditional/conservative constituent? 

Not if they can help it.

"Bursting at the Seams?"

"Building is out of control in this town!" Okay. "Why must there be apartment buildings on every available piece of land?" I hear you. "We can't keep adding houses everywhere; the schools are bursting at the seams!" Now you've lost me.

Counting the number of students in the schools and predicting how many there will be tomorrow - or five years from now - is fundamental to a well-run district. So why is it so hard? And why is there so much confusion?

After nearly sixteen years of service as a school board member in New Jersey, I conclude that the confusion is on purpose.

Education of the K-12 variety has become an industry. And the industry needs customers. Unlike other industries - where a dwindling customer base would be taken care of by a free market - the government schools have no pressure to scale down. All they want to do is keep the train on the tracks. If enrollment isn't growing, it's hard to justify increased spending - so they have to pretend.

The Hillsborough Township, New Jersey School District currently has 7,226 students across its nine schools. That is 435 FEWER students than the peak year when there were 7,661 students in the district. That was 2005 - EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO. 

Yet I constantly hear that the schools are "bursting at the seams." How can this be? More importantly, why did the rampant development in the town over the past twenty years not cause a tremendous INCREASE in enrollment but instead result in a DECREASE? And finally, why are there so many that don't know the truth?

We can answer the second question first with what sounds like a copout - the "rampant development" just didn't happen. The question is flawed. In this case, you actually can't believe your lying eyes. Hillsborough's population increased by a relatively paltry 6,000 between 2000 and 2020. That's a mere 18%. As a comparison, between 1970 and 1990, the township's population increased from 11,000 to nearly 29,000 - an 18,000-person, 160% increase! Those were the decades of "rampant development" - not the past 20 years.

Even so, shouldn't a population increase of 6,000 add some students to the school system? Yes - and it did, at first. School enrollments increased between 2000 and 2005 before heading in the other direction and bottoming out at 7,126 in 2015. Birth rates in Hillsborough simply did not keep pace with all of the new bedrooms being built. In 2002, the Auten Road Elementary School was doubled in size to become the Auten Road Intermediate School (grades 5-6), and the final of three major additions was completed at the high school, doubling its capacity from the original building of 1969. There have been no projects to increase school capacity since that time.

So, if there are 435 fewer students enrolled now than in 2005, and school capacity has remained the same, why is there a prevalent narrative that says the schools are overcrowded? The answer is that over the past 18 years, the state has changed the definition of full capacity. In other words, you no longer have what you paid for.

For example, in 2001, when voters went to the polls to approve the construction projects at ARIS and the high school, they were told that the project would increase the high school capacity from 2,100 to 2,600 students. Yet today, the state uses something called Facility Efficiency Standards to calculate that the current high school has a capacity of 1,517. Somewhere along the line, the residents of Hillsborough have lost space for over 1,000 students. That is space that they paid for - and it's all gone. 

The same is true of every school in the district. What we thought were elementary schools with a maximum enrollment of 600 are now down to an FES maximum of around 400. This is a real kick to longtime residents who paid for the schools to be built and expanded numerous times.

One last note...over the years, Hillsborough has commissioned demographic studies to predict and plan for future enrollment. Despite the fact that their entire business is built on PREDICTION, they have a mountain of excuses when their prognostication fails. In Hillsborough's case, they consistently predict a far more significant increase in school-aged children than what actually occurs - and they are resistant to any retroactive studies to see how their predictions have fared in the past. Another board member and I tried several times to get a demographer to look back on past predictions and hold themselves to account but faced nothing but poor excuses. 

The 2018 Enrollment Projection and Facility Utilization Study predicted an enrollment of 7,723 students for the 2023-24 school year. As reported at a December 2023 school board meeting, current enrollment is 7,226.

A New High School for Hillsborough? Part Two

In Part One I wrote about how, in the final years of my tenure on the Hillsborough Township Board of Education, there was a big push to do something about the outdated, overcrowded high school. The first question I asked when this subject came up was, "If a school with a capacity for 2,400 students has fewer than 2,400 students enrolled, how can it be overcrowded?"

The school is overcrowded in two ways that are tied together. Firstly, we can measure the capacity of the school by the number of classrooms. If a school has eighty classrooms designed for 30 students each, that gives us a maximum capacity of 2,400. The issue is that we don't use classrooms in the same way we did fifty years ago. Some classrooms will need to have fewer students - there is no getting around it.

Secondly, the basic infrastructure is too small. A school constructed fifty-four years ago with a limited ability for expansion was soon expanded far beyond that. That means the hallways are too small with several choke points and limited routes to get from one area to another - especially with the current enrollment. And common areas such as the cafeteria are overcrowded.

The "unlimited money" solution to this problem is to erect a new 2500-plus capacity high school on a new site and turn the current high school into a 6-7-8 middle school - thereby reducing the number of students in the building to fewer than 1800 and relieving the congestion in the hallways and the strain on the bathrooms, cafeteria, gyms, auditorium, and other common areas.

Setting aside the money issue (likely to be an immediate $1,000 increase on everyone's annual tax bill) the question becomes where to build a new school. The current high school site has many advantages. One is that it is centrally located. It also has good access to roads - three in fact! I know that some bemoan its location on the busy Amwell Road, but imagine if the school was tucked into a quiet residential development at the end of a cul-de-sac. 

The suggestion to build a new high school at the site of the former GSA Depot was explored in 1995 and has come up again from time to time as the land has been cleaned up and is available for development. But are there any other solutions? Can anything be done on the current high school site to alleviate the issues?

I have a few ideas - this is one:

1. Acquire the land at the GSA Depot.
2. Relocate the practice fields and baseball and softball diamonds to the GSA Depot.
3. Construct a cart path between the high school and the GSA Depot.
4. Build a new arts center/auditorium at the vacated soccer fields.
5. Reconfigure the current auditorium and music instruction rooms into classroom space.
6. Put a sign up at the GSA Depot site reading, "Future Home of Hillsborough High School".
7. Wait.

This simplified plan doesn't address all of the details and doesn't solve all of the issues but it plans for the future while buying time to see where enrollment goes. A new high school can be erected later. A centrally-located high-seating capacity arts center can always be used even after the current high school is converted into a middle school.

A New High School for Hillsborough? Part One

In 1995, Hillsborough High School was beginning to become overcrowded. The 26-year-old high school was 150 students beyond its 1,350-student capacity with no end in sight. Besides, the school already seemed outdated.

The school board believed that the solution to this problem was to build a brand-new high school and to reconfigure the other schools  - notably making the 1969 high school a 6-8 school. I have written about that plan - and the two rejected referenda that followed - and you can read about it here. Since then, the current high school has been expanded twice to its current nominal capacity of 2,400 students - but the talk of building a new high school persists.

A few years ago, a new fancy high school proposal was floated. A presentation by the high school principal condemned the current high school - once again - as being overcrowded and outdated.

There is no doubt that the two additions to the high school in the late 90s and early 2000s while adding classrooms, did not adequately address the common area issues. The cafeteria, the hallways, etc. are still small. Imagine building a skyscraper with just enough elevator capacity to reach the top floor, and then adding 50 more floors on top of that with no ability to build more elevator shafts. It won't work.

One of the reasons that the first 1995 high school referendum was rejected was that people objected to the site at the corner of Beekman Lane and New Center Road. They were concerned that the site was too far from the population centers of the 54-square-mile township and worried about what bringing sewers to that part of town would do to its rural character. 

Before the second 1995 referendum, the school board published a map denoting the 15 properties in Hillsborough that were considered for the high school, and why 14 of them were rejected. The referendum still failed.

During one of my final years on the school board - 25 years after the failed referendum - I accompanied the superintendent on a site visit to two of the rejected sites from 1995. One was the site bounded by North Willow Road on the west, Hamilton Road on the north, and Amwell Road on the south. This property was rejected by the school board in 1995 because of the presence of a major gas pipeline and substantial wetlands. Those conditions were unchanged in 2021.

The other site I visited was the Belle Mead GSA Depot. Since 1995, the southern half of the tract had been purchased by Somerset County and became Mountain View Park. Now the northern part of the property was controlled by the Hillsborough Township Committee and was available for development.

The difference with this property was that there had been significant changes since it was rejected by the school board in 1995 for "environmental reasons". The property had undergone a multimillion-dollar cleanup and was just awaiting final testing to be given the "all-clear".

So...what to do? I will give you my thoughts in Part Two!

Board Member Privilege?

Today, we hear the word "privilege" almost exclusively in the context of the debated concept of "white privilege". It's a sneaky way of saying "advantage" that makes it harder to argue against. Today's question is whether school board members - regardless of race - have privilege. Do they enjoy advantages merely by being school board members apart from how much effort they put into the position?

Even before I first ran for school board in 2007 I was aware that there was a notion that board members were privileged in regard to their children. The only privilege that became immediately apparent to me is that as a board member, I had the superintendent's cell phone number and a guarantee that he or she would answer pretty much every time I called. 

That is an advantage that the typical parent or concerned resident doesn't have. The problem is that as far as your own children are concerned you, as a board member, are prohibited from calling the superintendent. You simply have to follow the "chain of command" from teacher to principal and up to the superintendent. If a concern ever got that far the superintendent would already be aware and would be involved with any parent equally - including board members.

Another advantage - one that I put in the "blessing and curse" category - is that a board member acquires a much better understanding of how the school system works. You get to see the bureaucracy in action. Witness how the sausage is made. Your eyes will be opened, but it can also be infuriating! 

Since we are examining privilege in the context of advantage it might be useful to list some of the DISadvntages that accrue to you as a board member and to your school-aged children. Here are a few from my own experience and from the experience of board members I have served with:

• You will be the target of disinformation campaigns. Teachers and school employees with whom you had good relationships before you ran for school board will turn against you because they will believe lies promulgated by dishonorable union leaders. In my case, it was the lie that I was the "architect of privatization". In reality, I fought against it and preserved union jobs.
• You may have teachers' union picketers outside your home during contract negotiations. This happened to board members during and before my time on the board.
• You may be the target of a vicious, libelous, letter-writing campaign. In 2017 I was the target of such a campaign. Teachers, neighbors, friends, professional associates, and others received anonymous letters through the US mail with preposterous accusations of illegal activity. All false. This went on for almost a year.
• Your children's academic future could be threatened. During a contract negotiation, a union leader turned to one board member and said, "Your children are out of the school system. They're safe." Then turned to me and another board member and said, "Your children are still in the system, think about that before you make your next offer." P.S. The other board member had the resources to remove his younger children from the district, and did so.
• Your children could be singled out and made to feel uncomfortable in class because their parent is a board member as happened to my daughter.
• Forget about getting college recommendation letters for your kids if you are in contract negotiations. It's not happening. And these are the people that use the phrase "for the children". It's a joke.

I could probably go on but you get the idea. The disadvantages far outweigh the advantages - at least externally. The privilege, if there is one, comes from an internal feeling that you have been of service to your fellow citizens. That has to be enough.

Wawa and the Meaning of Life

After thirty-seven years, the Hillsborough, NJ Wawa is no more. The daily - sometimes twice daily - routine of hundreds of commuters, neighbors, and friends has been permanently disrupted. 

I have patronized the Wawa on Triangle Road in Hillsborough for over 30 years. Indeed, there was a period of seven or eight years when I was there seven days a week. I am a creature of habit, but I strive to make them good ones - and Wawa was a good one.

The Wawa morning shift cashiers must be the most patient people on earth. Why? Because they interact with customers who have yet to drink their morning coffee! I will miss them - just as I miss all the great employees who have moved on over the years (Nettie, AJ, Justin - even the other Justin!).

As my travel patterns in and around Hillsborough changed over the past three years I became a Wawa weekend warrior almost exclusively. But now even that is gone. And while I will miss the coffee (I can't see driving out to Summer Road/Route 202 for 20 oz. of joe) what I will miss the most are the friendly faces that I only ran into at Wawa, and their inevitable greeting, "How are things going on the school board?"

I have been off the board for nearly a year already and I still get that question. 

School board members (as well as school employees and local politicians) come in two varieties - those who are happy to engage with the public, and those who aren't. In some cases, it breaks down to whether or not the board member thinks residents of the town are truly his constituents. As discussed in a previous article, the New Jersey School Boards Association trains board members to NOT be accountable to residents as their representatives, but rather to act as "agents of the state". I was never an agent of the state.

I have known school board members - and other school employees - to avoid the public. In other words, if they must go to the local Shop Rite, it's during off-hours. And Wawa is to be avoided during the morning rush.

Of course, I know many who have the completely opposite philosophy.

The best example that comes to mind is my friend and longtime New Jersey Assemblyman the late Pete Biondi. During his most active years representing the residents of the 16th legislative district, he would be at the Hillsborough Wawa once or twice a week during the morning coffee hours. After making his coffee, he would step outside the store and make himself available to anyone who wanted to talk.

What I observed in those years was a confident person willing to engage. Although I never went as far as setting up shop outside the doors, I did try to emulate his attitude towards the public. And I never shied away from the hard questions - even when they came from Pete himself!

And one other thing...about 15 years ago at the coffee counter, as I was about to add the half-and-half Pete stopped me briefly, reached into the cooler, turned to me, and said, "I've got the secret to the meaning of life." In his hand, he held a carton of French Vanilla creamer. 

I am going to miss Wawa.

So Many Questions

What are children taught in school? That used to be an easy question to answer. Beyond the three "R"s (reading, writing, and arithmetic), they learn the sciences, history, arts, and many other readily described vocational and academic subjects - and we used to know what each meant.

Today's educational landscape - around the country and New Jersey - has become so politically charged that no traditional subject can escape contemporary politics. The law demands it.

Even classes that we thought were safe have succumbed. And so we learn that what we thought was an objective math truth - two plus two equals four - should instead be looked at under the microscope to find the percolating molecules of white supremacy. The sciences are not much better.

But that's not what this column is about. Rather, it is about how the public can discover what is being taught.

I first became interested in this subject in my second term as a school board member 12 years ago. It was the tenth anniversary of 9-11 and I wanted to know if our school district had a lesson about 9-11 and what was in the lesson. You would think that type of information would be easy for a board member to get. LOL.

In all fairness, the assistant superintendent was happy to show me the 9-11 curriculum. There were definitely a lot of typewritten words on that printout. The problem was that most of them were in the form of a question. 

What I needed were the answers. For example, how were teachers answering the question, "What motivated the 9-11 hijackers?" It seems like that would be essential but that information wasn't available. It's all roses and hedgehogs to pose a bunch of important-sounding questions - but what were the answers? 

You might say that there is no one correct answer to that question. OK. Then let me know some of the answers. Nope. Board members don't need to know that because that crosses the line into managing the schools. What hope is there for parents to know what their children are being taught if board members don't even know?

This sort of came to a head during the major 2020 to 2022 New Jersey Social Studies curriculum revisions. I asked to see a representative lesson plan - for any Social Studies topic. It was not going to happen. How dare I ask to see a lesson plan. Who did I think I was? That is for the professionals, not lowly board members. It was the first time I remember board members voting NO on curriculum. 

As we pay our respects today to the victims of 9-11, let's pray that their deaths were not for nothing and that our children may know that.