BY JANE MEGGITT
Staff Writer
MILLSTONE – The idea that the Upper Freehold Regional School District might send some of its students to Millstone’s new middle school does not sit well with one township resident.
At the Sept. 11 Millstone Board of Education meeting, resident Barbara Smith said she was concerned after reading an Examiner article about the issue currently being under consideration. She said she has exchanged e-mails on the subject with many other concerned parents.
Both districts passed middle school referendums in 2004. While Millstone has its building well under construction, the other school district has not even broken ground yet.
The new Millstone middle school on Baird Road is expected to open in September 2007, which was the same projected opening date for the Upper Freehold Regional School District’s (UFRSD) new middle school on Ellisdale Road. However, the UFRSD construction has been hampered by soil remediation and wastewater treatment permit problems at its proposed site. The site has also become a political issue in Allentown and Upper Freehold, which make up the regional school district.
The current UFRSD middle school is seriously overcrowded, as attested to by district employees and others at recent Board of Education meetings.
At the Aug. 16 UFRSD Board of Education meeting, Wendy Gansberg, an Upper Freehold resident who ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the board last year, asked the board to consider extending its send-receive student relationship with Millstone by temporarily sending some of its middle school students to Millstone’s new middle school once it opens.
Since Millstone does not have its own high school, it currently sends its high school-aged students to Allentown High School in the UFRSD. If UFRSD decides to send its students to Millstone, Gansberg recommended that Allentown and Upper Freehold students be kept separate from Millstone students.
Smith said she hopes UFRSD students will not attend Millstone’s new middle school. She said she felt that sending UFRSD children to the Millstone school would be unfair to Millstone students.
“Our kids shouldn’t be crowded into another school,” she said, adding that Millstone could sell the trailers it used as classrooms to the UFRSD.
Millstone Superintendent of Schools Mary Anne Donahue said that she and UFRSD interim Superintendent of Schools Robert Smith are looking at the issue and that the amount of things to consider is “massive.”
Donahue said she has not been able to list all the concerns such a send-receive relationship would entail.
“It’s not a done deed,” she said.
Millstone Board of Education President Mary Ann Friedman said nothing has come before the board yet on the subject.