BY MARK ROSMAN
Staff Writer
The future for the Freehold Regional High School District holds a seventh school.
That is the news that Superintendent of Schools James Wasser delivered to the Manalapan Township Committee during a short presentation he and Business Administrator Joan Nesenkar Saylor made at the committee’s April 5 meeting.
Wasser and Saylor came before the committee to ask municipal officials to help the district in its search for property that could be used when a decision is eventually made to build a seventh high school.
The FRHSD is made up of eight sending municipalities – Colts Neck, Englishtown, Farmingdale, Freehold Borough, Freehold Township, Howell, Manalapan and Marlboro – and operates six high schools, in Colts Neck, Freehold Borough, Freehold Township, Howell, Manalapan and Marlboro.
Wasser said when he became superintendent in 1998 the district’s enrollment was 8,100 students in five high schools. Since that time, he said, Colts Neck High School was built and the district’s overall enrollment has increased to about 11,700 students.
The rate of growth which had been averaging between 500 and 600 new students per year district-wide has slowed a bit, he said, adding that enrollment is expected to be about 12,000 students in 2006-07, 12,200 students in 2007-08 and 12,300 students in 2008-09.
Wasser asked the members of the committee to consider providing land for a high school on the former Probasco farm at the corner of Route 33 and Millhurst Road.
That 135-acre parcel is currently the subject of a Planning Board application for a 500,000-square-foot retail project known as The Village at Manalapan. Township Committee members have discussed the possibility of attempting to acquire a portion of that property for municipal use.
Wasser said the FRHSD does not own any property now. Over the past few years he has asked municipal officials in the district’s sending communities to consider donating land to the district so that will be in place when a decision is made – perhaps in three or four years – to proceed with plans for a seventh high school.
The process of building a high school – from seeking the public’s approval in a referendum to the day the building’s doors open to students – can take between three and four years, he said.
“We have a little reprieve for the next few years,” the superintendent told municipal officials. “Our rate of enrollment growth is slowing a bit, but the growth is continuing.”
As a basis of comparison, Saylor said Colts Neck High School was built on 77 acres. This takes into account the building, parking lots and sports fields. She said a smaller piece of property could work in Manalapan if the new school’s athletic teams were permitted to use municipal playing fields and if the football stadium at Manalapan High School could be shared among the two high schools.
“We are not looking to start building [today], but we are looking for land,” Saylor said. “It is critical for our future.”
Wasser said large pieces of land are “drying up” in the district. He reiterated Saylor’s statement that administrators are not talking about building a high school now.
In a subsequent conversation he said, “You don’t build a school when you don’t need it. The key is getting the property.”
During the administrators’ April 5 presentation at town hall, Committeeman Anthony Gennaro acknowledged Wasser’s desire for a large piece of property, but he asked the superintendent what the district could work with.
Wasser said administrators could work with a parcel of 60 acres if they had to.
The Manalapan committee members thanked Wasser and Saylor for making the presentation and said they would consider the request for property.