Parents, Community Invited To Meetings On Howell School Reconfiguration Plans

Faced with an imbalance between school population and available space, officials in the Howell Public School district have been searching for ways to adjust class sizes and make use of building space.

But how to do that while mitigating parents’ concerns has proven, so far, to be an elusive goal.

A redistricting proposal that would have changed schools for some neighborhoods was rejected by the Board of Education in December, according to a report in the Tri-Town News, and the administration of the K-8 district was sent back to the drawing board.

But its most recent proposal for rebalancing the school populations, presented at the March 11 school board meeting, has received a less-than-favorable response from parents as well.

That rebalancing plan, which can be viewed on the district’s website by clicking here, calls for regrouping the district’s 6,300 students by grade level, with five schools set up for kindergarten through second grade, five more for third through fifth grades, and two middle schools for sixth through eighth grades.

The district has scheduled a public forum on the plan for Thursday at 6 p.m. at Land O’ Pines School on 1 Thompson Way (GPS users should use 81 Windeler Road, according to the district’s website). A second meeting is set for 6:30 p.m. March 30 at Memorial Middle School.

A lengthy discussion on the grade reconfiguration plan on the Facebook group Our Howell NJ gives some insight into concerns about the plan.

Some of those concerns are included on a flier circulated by a parents’ group about the plan and urging parents to attend the forum.

The problem the district is facing is that in some schools, classrooms are overcrowded, with 25 or more students in a class, while other schools have 15-student classes and empty classrooms -- creating an inequity within the district. Teachers and parents have long sought smaller class sizes to promote better individualized attention for students and to minimize discipline issues.

And certain portions of town are facing even more growth as new homes are being built.

But parents discussing the issue on the Our Howell NJ site expressed a number of concerns, among them:

• Busing: Some parents who attended the March 11 board meeting said bus routes may stop at multiple schools, a prospect that worries those who have younger students
• School changes: Disruptions in friendships and in continuity caused by having students change schools for third and then again for sixth grades, in addition to any change in schools caused by the implementation of the plan.
• Educational impact: Parents want to know if there is a negative impact on education from having schools configured by grade level.

But the overwhelming criticism is what is viewed by most as a rush to complete a reconfiguration in time for the start of the 2015-16 school year in September, a time frame most see as too aggressive to effectively address potential problems and minimize the impact on students.

School Board president Timothy O’Brien, in a letter posted on the district’s website, said discussions of what to do have been going on for several years, and the current proposal is the result of a “comprehensive and painstaking process of discovery and evaluation ... (with) the goal to create a significantly improved educational environment for our children and provide stability and sustainability for our community going forward.”

O’Brien quoted Superintendent Joseph Isola in the letter as well, saying the reconfiguration will allow teachers to have more collaboration with other teachers at the same grade levels as well as enabling the district’s “guidance and other educational services to better provide more age-specific social and emotional support for students in each school.”

The plan also addresses the concern that the district is rushing to implement the program as well:

“​While reconfiguration is a relatively new topic, the work involved in reconfiguration is not new or unknown to Howell. Using that understanding, we do not find ourselves in a haphazard endeavor as the word “rushing” might infer,” according to the document.

“We are aggressively pursuing this timeline for the simple fact that if we do not address the imbalance of populations between our schools, the quality of education that the families of Howell rightfully expect will not be sustainable. The solution to this need has been pushed off for nearly two years. Inaction or delay will have significantly negative effects on our schools, our supports for teachers, and ultimately, our students.”