Haber Demographic Study Recommends Moving 119 Students Across Middletown School District

MIDDLETOWN, NJ — The long-awaited Ross Haber study was unveiled to the public at Tuesday night's Middletown school board meeting; watch here.

This was a demographic study the Middletown school district paid consultant Ross Haber & Associates $24,000 to do in the past year. You can read the presentation of Haber's findings here: https://drive.google.com/file/...

The school district hired Haber to do the study after a failed attempt by the school district last year to close three schools (Navesink and Leonardo elementaries, and Bayshore Middle School) as part of its 2025 budget preparations. Last year's proposal to close and consolidate schools — and the way the school district introduced it — was met with extreme resistance from many Middletown public school parents.

Haber's study provides a five-year enrollment projection for the Middletown school district. Haber and his team said while there is expected to be some increase in student enrollment, overall enrollment in Middletown schools will be relatively stable over the next five years.

"We have a stable and slightly growing enrollment," said a Haber employee in his presentation to the school board.

However, the Haber consultant talking about "boundary revisions" it recommends the Middletown school district undertake. Haber recommends moving a total of 119 students across six schools in the district. Those six schools are, and they would all have students either moved from or to them:

• Nut Swamp
• Middletown Village
• Lincroft
• River Plaza
• Ocean
• Harmony

This is just a suggestion from Haber. The Middletown school district has not decided to do anything — yet.

This proposal is "designed to better shape boundaries and balance enrollments and reduce the long-term impact on buildings as enrollment grows," said Haber in its presentation to the board.

"If there have to be boundary changes, we want to move as few students as possible," said the Haber employee.

"This was a path of least resistance, moving as few students as possible," said Middletown school superintendent Jessica Alfone.

"We're in a really different position than we were last year, financially," she also said at Tuesday night's meeting. "We were in a budget deficit (last year) that we were able to fortunately get some relieve from. So that puts us in a different position to make decisions moving forward."

Now that the Haber report is in hand — and with it the suggestion to relocate 119 students — Strategic Planning meetings will start meeting again in February. In the past year, any parent or Middletown resident could join could the Strategic Planning process.

Questions regarding the Haber presentation may be emailed to:
HaberReport@middletownk12.org

Middletown Parents Fervently Protest Idea To Close 3 Schools (March 2025)