Parents ask board to scrap realignment plan
Say some of the student numbers the move is based on are flawed
BY CHRIS GAETANO
Staff Writer

SOUTH BRUNSWICK - Township parents asked the Board of Education Monday to reconsider a plan to move 35 children attending Cambridge School to Constable School, both which are located in Kendall Park.

Two of the parents, Rich Berg and Roman Duttwyler, presented the board a petition with 131 signatures before speaking at length why they disagreed with the district's realignment plan and what they proposed to the board should do instead.

The realignment, which was first proposed in May 2005, began in the 2005-06 school year and will continue until 2006-07. Altogether, it impacts more than 600 students living in 10 neighborhoods in the district.

The 35 students who live in Whispering Woods and currently go to Cambridge will begin classes at Constable in the fall, should the board stick with its plan. Another 83 children would also be moved from Monmouth Junction School to Cambridge.

Duttwyler contended that the original data used by the school board regarding Whispering Woods was false, as it said that there were 97 children in the community attending Cambridge while there is only 35. According to Duttwyler, using the more accurate figure, the move will generate 48 more seats in the class than there was before.

McCartney said that someone had already contacted him about that and he was aware of the 35-student figure. He said during the meeting that he would have made the same choices regardless.

This is not the first time Whispering Woods residents have opposed this realignment. During the May 16 board meeting, they and residents of Deans Lane both approached the board with reservations about the plan to move students from one school to another. The measure was proposed in one week and passed in the next.

The Whispering Woods residents opposed to this realignment said that moving the children from one school to another will disrupt their quality of education, cause unnecessary emotional stress and may have a negative impact on the values of their homes. Parents also stated that because Cambridge School is the only school in the township ranked in the top 10 in the state, that they are hesitant to accept a move.

Duttwyler, in his presentation to the board, proposed that the 83 students from Monmouth Junction move to Constable, which he says is closer anyway, and the children at Constable who live in Whispering Woods should be able to stay where they are. According to Duttwyler, this will save the school 48 seats, and since there is such a high turnover for families in Whispering Woods, the number of children is fairly stable and will give the district some extra room for some time to come.

According to McCartney, the residents' plan "operates in a vacuum."

The board said that realignment is an inevitable part of any school district in order to create a roughly equal balance of students in each school, rather than have some schools be overcrowded and others be undercrowded.

"When people move into the district, we don't tell them where to move, they move wherever they want. And because of that, we have uneven distribution of students and our boundaries need to change periodically to take into account this unevenness," said McCartney.

McCartney said that in 2002, there was a massive school realignment involving 39 different neighborhoods and the board wanted to do everything it could do guard against repeats. He said that many neighborhoods have been realigned in the past, and that it's not fair for the other neighborhoods being redistricted to make an exception for Whispering Woods. He was also concerned about setting a precedent if the board did decide to make an exception for Whispering Woods.

He also said that Constable was also a blue ribbon school and the district tried hard to make the curriculum seamlessly coordinated, so students need not worry about interruptions in their studies; what they are learning at Cambridge they will also learn at Constable.

School board members expressed similar sentiments. Matthew Speesler said that the board must occasionally make tough decisions and that if it tried to make every single person happy, the board would never get anything done.

"We need to make tough decisions as a board in order to move the district forward," said Speesler.

Board member Harry Delgado said that he had children in the district who went through a realignment and turned out just fine. He also asked what the residents think will happen to the Monmouth Junction students that they are proposing to move in their stead.

Some board members, while maintaining a unified front before the Whispering Woods residents, suggested that it couldn't hurt to look at the numbers one last time in light of the 35-97 discrepancy and see what impacts the discrepancy would have on future plans. McCartney said he would have no problem looking one more time, but warned residents not to take it as a signal that the board might be changing its mind regarding the realignment.

Residents of Whispering Woods came away from the confrontation less than satisfied, convinced that their solution was more reasonable.

"We're asking you to move less children, affect one less community, and save you approximately 48 seats over the next few years," said Berg.