BY LINDA DeNICOLA
Staff Writer
CHRIS KELLY staff The Monmouth County Vocational School District’s new Biotechnology High School is taking shape off Kozloski Road, Freehold Township. Administrators are planning to admit a freshman class of about 60 students in September. Construction of the Monmouth County Biotechnology High School is under way in Freehold Township and if the weather cooperates this winter the new building may open next September.
Brian D. McAndrew, superintendent of the Monmouth County Vocational School District, said the steel is up and construction workers are beginning to put the roof decks and the second floor on the building.
“It’s too early to project when it will open, but the first class will start in the fall. If the building is not ready we will have to make alternate site arrangements,” McAndrew said.
The Biotechnology High School is being built on Kozloski Road behind the Monmouth County Career Center. The school will start with a class of 60 freshmen. McAndrew said the application procedure for eighth-graders from throughout the county was completed on Dec. 10.
Those students will be tested — along with the applicants to all of the other vocational schools — in January. Acceptance letters will go out in late February, according to the superintendent.
The Biotechnology High School will join a school district that already includes High Technology High School, Middle-town; the Marine Academy of Science and Technology, Sandy Hook; Communications High School, Wall; and the Monmouth County Academy of Allied Health and Science, Neptune.
According to McAndrew, the new school will open with about nine classrooms, science and biotechnology labs. A class of freshmen will be added each September until the building is fully operational with between 250 and 300 students in grades nine through 12.
The 75,000-square-foot school will cost about $19 million, with 40 percent of the cost covered by the state and the balance paid through the capital budget of Mon-mouth County Board of Freeholders.
McAndrew said that when the school opens the career academy will be involved in partnerships with Rutgers University’s Cook College biotechnology program, as well as with the New Jersey Council of Bio-Technology and pharmaceutical companies. The curriculum will include agricultural science research so the school will be working with the college and university in terms of research in the agricultural sciences, the superintendent said.