BOE Members Discuss Overcrowded Classrooms

Should Freehold Borough and Freehold Township school districts be merged? member Daniel Xavier broached the topic during the governing body's Dec. 12 meeting.

“What are the thoughts in putting it to a public referendum and asking the people what we should do about the 800-pound gorilla in the room,” Board of Education member Daniel Xavier said, introducing a discussion about a merger of the Freehold Township and Freehold Borough school districts. The 800-pound gorilla in the room being the fact that the Freehold Borough School District has been taking in more students in past years and is running out of space to put them. 

The Freehold Borough School District should be receiving approximately $12.5 million in funding from the state due to the state funding formula. However, the district has consistently only received approximately two-thirds of that funding and is constantly left to find money in other areas like increasing taxes. 

“Because we fall short every year we can’t do capital improvements in the district,” said Xavier. “We need to find an alternative instead of taxing an already taxed community.”

With limited classroom space, Freehold Borough has already turned their cafeteria stage and library into make-shift classrooms, and classrooms have been rented out at Freehold Township’s West Freehold School to support the large influx of students in the borough. Another dilemma the Freehold Borough School District faces is limitations for any expansion. Meanwhile, Freehold Township recently went on a building boom and has extra space in their schools and a potentially declining student population, Xavier said.

Patrick DeGeorge, business administrator of the Freehold Borough Board of Education, said the idea of merging with Freehold Township has been brought up many times before.

“Township and Borough merging into one school district has been talked about every year for the past 4-5 years,” said DeGeorge. “It wouldn’t be prudent to ask anyone to vote without a feasibility study, we can’t just put something in a referendum, it needs to be approved by both boards of education.”

According to DeGeorge, regardless of Freehold Borough School District’s problems with overcrowding, nothing can be done as far as a merger until the Freehold Township School District signs on to the idea of merging, but at this time, Freehold Township does not have any interest in consolidating with Freehold Borough.

“The combination of our districts doesn’t necessarily translate the savior from a funding perspective, they are not going to have as much funding as they used too and I’m not sure if they will be able to absorb this district,” said DeGeorge. “It would cost more to Township residents to take on this district.” 

If and only if the township agrees to look into this possibility, a feasibility study would have to be performed by each Board of Education, which could cost each district up to $50,000. The study would look at instructional issues, legal issues, contract issues, administration and much more, according to DeGeorge.

With information from the study, each board of education would have to agree on their own to move forward to the next step of merging which would be to legally dissolve on their own. However, if findings produced from the study do not make both districts want to legally dissolve and move on, then the $50,000 cost of the study would be lost from an already low budget. 

If borough and township were to combine, there would be seven elementary schools, three middle schools and one pre-kindergarten school to accommodate the needs of all the children in Freehold.