Area school districts struggle to maximize instructional space while minimizing costs, By Sarah DiLorenzo High Point Regional High School’s student body grew by 221 between 2002 and this year. With another 46 expected to enroll by next year, classes for many of the high school’s 1,390 students are already being held in the cafeteria, the auditorium and wherever else students can be squeezed in. Meanwhile, in Sparta, the current enrollment of 1,200 students is expected to increase by at least 220 by 2008. Residents defeated a referendum in 2003 for a new elementary school, but the school plans to bring a new one for a $71.5-million addition to the high school in September. Lenape Valley Regional High School, now at 868 students, estimates it will have 980 by 2008. Superintendent Paul Palek thinks the school will eventually need about eight additional classrooms to adequately accommodate this influx. Before turning to the taxpayers, the school has converted larger rooms, such as part of a media center, into classrooms. Stories of classes being held in closets and cafeterias abound in Sussex County, as most districts experience booming growth, and many have difficulty walking the line between satisfying their taxpayers and satisfying their facility needs. Many schools in the area are bursting at the seams as new housing developments crop up like weeds; the money to expand those schools is significantly harder to raise. While they wait for bond issues to pass, for construction to finish, or for the right climate in which to bring a referendum, the schools have learned to cope. Residents living within the High Point School District recently defeated a $10-million referendum for the addition of ten classrooms, mostly science labs, and school officials have no plans to bring another. That makes scheduling students an art form, according to Superintendent John Hannum. His school does not show any signs of slowing down the latest demographic study had its enrollment going to 1,460 so the district is considering adding temporary classrooms. Sparta has also turned to creative scheduling to address its problems, like starting lunch at 9:43 a.m. Since the 1970s, the district has used a split schedule in grades 1-3 and 9-12. A report explaining the bond to voters says the schools have run out of these kinds of “band-aid” approaches and must expand the high school. Sparta’s proposal would provide space in the high school for 1,525 students, which Superintendent Thomas Morton thinks the school is likely to reach not long after 2010, the estimated completion date for the project if the referendum passes. The school has commissioned a new demographic study, to appear at the end of April, because its growth has already outstripped the projections in a 2004 study. What then, if the school continues to grow? “You design space that you can add on to,” Morton said. That is exactly the kind of provision Wallkill Valley Regional High School made in its renovation, which cost of $7.5 million three years ago. When the school added nine classrooms and a large group room, it allowed for a second floor that could be added later if needed. Wallkill continues to grow, if not quite at the same rate as High Point and Sparta. The present freshman class pushed the school’s population from 825 to 900, according to Superintendent Joseph DiPasquale. He thinks the school will max out around 950-975 students. One of the ways schools are able to squeeze more students in is to increase class size. Steve Kepnes, High Point’s business administrator, explained it was hard to know how much class size had increased since some special needs classes’ low numbers skew the average. But, he said, “We have some classes I would like to see go down.” He said the ideal class size is in the low 20s. To push class sizes down, though, schools need more teachers in addition to more space. Money for hiring new teachers is allocated in school budgets, which are separate from the referenda that pay for capital improvement projects. But, with increases in school budgets limited by state law to the same percentage as the previous year’s increase in the Consumer Price Index, districts are hard pressed to find the funds for more teachers. Wallkill hired one teacher in response to its growth last year and is in the process of hiring another. The high school’s biggest classes were over 30 students, well above DiPasquale’s ideal of 25. With the addition of two new teachers, class sizes will fall to between 25 and 30 students. Over the past four years, Sparta has hired 34 more teachers in order to maintain its class sizes and to reduce them in some cases. Some districts have also had to increase busing in addition to building size. High Point and Wallkill were spared, as many students are able to drive to school. But Sparta has added two bus routes recently, with 54 students on a bus, to accommodate its growth. Doin’ just fine Vernon Township High School expects its population to begin declining next year and for the foreseeable future. Vernon’s superintendent, Tony Macerino, has presided over a significant inflow of students over the past several years and sees this decline as an inevitable ebb. In 1987, the district opened Cedar Mountain Primary School to accommodate children from the new Old Orchard development. In those early years, the school received about 200 to 250 students from Old Orchard each year; this year only 24 children from that development are in grades 1-4. Macerino attributed this decline to rising house prices that have prevented younger families from moving into the area or upgrading to a bigger house, thus keeping more young families from moving in. The increasing costs of commuting to New York also may be affecting the population. “I feel that the current declining enrollment is likely to be cyclical,” Macerino said in an E-mail, noting that many older couples had yet to leave the area, even though their children had long left the schools; eventually those houses will turn over to families with children. “However, one does not know when the cycle will change,” he said. In the meantime, Vernon is vigilantly monitoring enrollments with monthly reports, bracing for the changing of the guard, even though Macerino suspects the school will have adequate space for many years to come. Franklin is experiencing a similar decline; the K-8 district inherited a K-12 building when Wallkill Valley Regional High School opened and so has plenty of room. Superintendent Thomas Turner, though, said every room is being used. Children, like water, it seems, seek their own level. Dennis Tobin, superintendent of Hardyston schools, said his district is quite comfortable because of good planning on the part of the board of education. The township has a new middle school, and Tobin predicted there would not be “facility issues” for a while. Shifting of the pressure This distribution of growth and decline is consistent with what Eric Snyder, the county’s planning director, indicated about trends in Sussex’s population. “There’s a shift in the focus of development, courtesy of the Highlands,” he said, referring to the land protection act. The eastern half of the county, where Vernon, Hardyston and Franklin are, is “built out,” according to Snyder. The pressure is shifting to the central part of the county, hitting schools like High Point, which draws from Wantage, Sussex Borough, Frankford, Lafayette and Branchville. Hannum also chalked up the growth at High Point to the Highlands act. The law has pushed building into the areas that feed High Point, he said. So what’s a school district to do? When will the cycle change? When will they be hit with dozens, perhaps hundreds, more students? “We scream a little bit and then we try to figure out what we’re going to do,” Sparta’s Morton said. That sentiment was echoed all over. As Leonard Elovitz, a demographer, said, “There’s no crystal ball.”