The Freehold Regional High School District is one of five school districts that have informed the Jamesburg School District Board of Education they are willing to consider the idea of accepting high school students from Jamesburg.
At the present time the Jamesburg School District sends the borough’s high school students to Monroe Township High School on a tuition basis at a cost of $16,100 per pupil per year.
Monroe Township High School is expected to enroll about 225 students who are residents of Jamesburg during the 2011-12 school year. The revenue to Monroe Township amounts to $3.6 million.
Jamesburg and Monroe Township are neighboring municipalities in Middlesex County. Monroe Township shares a border with Manalapan.
With the cost of tuition in mind, the Jamesburg school board has indicated that beginning in September 2012 it would like to send the borough’s high school students to a high school other than Monroe Township.
If the initiative proceeds, state education officials will eventually have a say in whether Jamesburg and Monroe Township can dissolve their send-receive relationship.
In recent weeks the Jamesburg school board contacted 18 school districts in the hope of finding a more affordable alternative to Monroe Township. Jamesburg students have been attending Monroe Township for 32 years.
Monroe Township’s rising tuition rate — which starting in the 2011-12 school year will incorporate the cost of debt service to pay for the construction of a new Monroe Township High School — prompted Jamesburg officials to consider the pullout.
The first class to be affected by the change in high schools would be students who are entering the eighth grade in Jamesburg this fall. Jamesburg residents who are already attending Monroe Township or who are about to enter their freshman year there will be able to complete all four high school years in that school, according to the board. Jamesburg Business Administrator Tom Reynolds said the tuition cost in Monroe Township, which now stands at $16,100 per pupil, may rise each year and will become an issue for Jamesburg when preparing the 2012-13 budget, due in part to the state-imposed 2 percent cap on tax levy increases.
At a June 30 board meeting, Jamesburg Superintendent of Schools Gail Verona listed the school districts the board contacted to determine interest in receiving Jamesburg students.
She said the districts that expressed an interest in accepting Jamesburg’s high school students, pending further information, were the Freehold Regional High School District, West Windsor, South Amboy, Old Bridge and Matawan-Aberdeen.
The closest school to Jamesburg in the Freehold Regional High School District is Manalapan High School (about 10 miles).
The Jamesburg board will now send those districts information regarding demographics, ethnicity and special education needs. The board is requesting that the interested districts give Jamesburg a decision no later than Sept. 30, Verona said. Some Jamesburg parents have objected to their school board’s discussion about ending the send-receive relationship with Monroe Township. The parents have said they want the longstanding relationship to continue.
Several months ago a group of Jamesburg parents attended a meeting of the Freehold Regional High School District Board of Education to ask administrators not to consider accepting the Jamesburg students. The Jamesburg parents said they had no issue with the FRHSD for any reason, but they want their children to attend Monroe Township.
School districts that were contacted by the Jamesburg board but were not interested in receiving students were East Brunswick, New Brunswick, North Brunswick, Highland Park, Perth Amboy, Sayreville, South Brunswick, South River, Spotswood, East Windsor, Princeton, Hazlet and Holmdel. This article was written by staff writers Christina Haberstroh and Mark Rosman.