BY KATHY CHANG
Staff Writer
MONROE — School officials said that the news of potentially 4,004 new housing units required to be developed in the township over the next 20 years sent them essentially back to the drawing board on addressing enrollment growth.
Schools Superintendent Michael Kozak said the report of the housing units came to them in April, an act that is the outcome due to a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling on affordable housing.
“This required a new demographic report, which we are still awaiting,” he said at a recent special Board of Education meeting. “We were pretty much done with the goal when the new housing information came in … we kind of had to go back to the drawing board.”
School officials met with the Student Growth Advisory Committee in May to alert them of the new information and discussed possible solutions, which included holding a referendum to build a new elementary school or schools and addition to the high school.
Addressing enrollment growth in the Monroe Township School District was a goal set last school year.
The Student Growth Advisory Committee has met each month to address short and long-term goals since January.
Board of Education President Steven Riback said the initial settlement on COAH (Council on Affordable Housing) required 11,625 new units, which included affordable, market value and senior units.
“The town using all its resources engineers and attorneys received credits towards the settlement,” said Riback.
The settlement now requires 4,004 new homes to be developed, a process that may take up to 20 years with permits and construction.
“The problem that we have is the state only lets us project out five years to look at enrollments and what we are going to be developing so we had to get a new demography report,” said Riback.
The board president said once the district receives the demographer’s report they will schedule a meeting with the Student Growth Advisory Committee and discuss how to move forward.
The Monroe Township School District currently has approximately 6,109 students and is made up of eight schools — one high school, one middle school and six elementary schools.
