As Manalapan grew into a suburban destination for thousands of newcomers during the 1960s, the members of the Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District Board of Education were left to deal with the reality of expansion that was needed to educate all of the children who moved here and who would be born here.
On land provided by developer Kevork Hovnanian, a building initially known as the Pease Road School was constructed in the mid-1960s on Pease Road near Old Queens Boulevard and the sprawling Yorktowne residential development.
The Pease Road School, which opened in 1966, became the junior high school for Manalapan and Englishtown children in the seventh and eighth grades.
In 1967, the year of the school’s first graduating class, the board renamed the building the Pine Brook School after the local stream that powered a sawmill in the late 1800s.
Following the construction of the Manalapan Englishtown Middle School (MEMS) on Millhurst Road, Manalapan, in the early 1990s, the Pine Brook School was transitioned to an elementary school that housed pupils in multiple grades.
Several years ago, board members and district administrators decided to make Pine Brook School the building where all of the district’s sixth grade pupils would spend a year during which they would not be the oldest students in an elementary school or the youngest pupils in MEMS.
This year, in honor of the school’s 50th anniversary, the Pine Brook PTA commissioned a new logo/mural that was created by Diane Gianettino, the owner of DCG Creative in Manalapan, and painted by local artist Laura Angress, the owner of Murals By Laura, Freehold.
On June 14, Principal John Spalthoff welcomed guests to the school for a ceremony during which the new Pine Brook Pirates logo/mural was unveiled. The artwork is in front of the flag pole.
Spalthoff said the school’s staff remains committed to providing the best education possible to Pine Brook’s students – just as the educators who came before them have done for a half-century.
I attended the Pine Brook School for junior high from 1972-74 and was honored to have been invited to the unveiling of the new logo. A quick calculation led me to realize my classmates and I were the school’s eighth graduating class.
I have many happy memories of my two years at Pine Brook, especially excellent teachers like Mr. Grodberg (who lent me the first James Bond novel I ever read), Mrs. Davison (always showed excellent film strips), Mr. Hampton (in whose class I created a beautiful multi-color clay representation of the terrain of Zaire) and Mr. Tiplady (who encouraged an aspiring writer and truly understood children between the ages of 12 and 14).
I have to believe the school board members and district administrators who conceived the building in the early 1960s hoped it would educate generations of students. Even if they were not thinking about the school’s 50th anniversary at that time, their foresight has paid off in all the years that have followed their decision.
Mark Rosman is the managing editor of the News Transcript. He may be reached at gmntnews@newspapermediagroup.com
