Hillsborough High School, Part 2

After Hillsborough voters went to the polls on July 14, 1964, and rejected a $2.9 million bond issue to build a high school at the corner of Amwell and Homestead Roads, school board members went home to lick their wounds and come up with a Plan B. While not giving up the dream of a school solely for Hillsborough students, the first serious proposal came more than a year later.

16 September 1965 Courier News

Montgomery Township was in the same situation as Hillsborough. Despite having only half the number of students, Montgomery had been turned down by every area district in their quest to find a place for their high-schoolers after June 1968. Because Hillsborough already had a site for a school, board members decided to explore the concept of a regional high school with our neighbors to the south.

Here's what Hillsborough school board member Edward Jacobs had to say about the urgency facing the districts:

"Regionalization is just one of the alternatives being investigated by the Hillsborough board, which is now awaiting replies from all high school districts within 15 miles concerning their ability to accept Hillsborough high school students by September, 1968. In view of the facts [sic] that Montgomery, with half the number of our high school students, has been turned down by every school district in the area, it makes me most pessimistic about Hillsborough's finding a receiving district for its children."

A committee was formed with three representative board members and the superintendent of each district, but ultimately the districts decided to abandon the plan and continue to pursue the construction of new schools in each town.

10 June 1966 Courier News

Faced with the prospect that Hillsborough students would have nowhere to go after the 1967-68 school year when Somerville would no longer accept them, the board members, superintendent, and architect spent the next six months working through 16 revisions trying to come up with an economical high school plan that voters would approve.

27 June 1966 Courier News

This second high school plan increased the number of classrooms from 35 to 44, and also included a larger cafeteria and vocal and instrumental music rooms. Because construction costs had risen and the school was larger, the cost would increase from $2.9 million to $3.56 million.

29 June 1966 Courier News

Unlike in 1964, the township committee did not publicly oppose the referendum, which was widely endorsed. Voters went to the polls on June 28, 1966, and gave the project their overwhelming approval.  But that was not the last high school referendum needed before the school could open. We will take a look at referendum numbers 3a, 3b, and 3c, in Part 3 next week.

Hillsborough High School, Part 1

In 1954 the Boro of Manville Board of Education was in a bind.  In the twenty-five years since the municipality had split from Hillsborough Township, the population had nearly doubled from around 5,000 to almost 10,000. In just the eleven years between 1943 and 1954, the pupil population had grown from 793 to 1293 - and many of those were high school students. For a town without a high school, whose school board had just been notified by two of the three districts attended by Manville highschoolers - Bound Brook and Dunellen, the third being New Brunswick - that new students would no longer be accepted after 1955, this was a serious problem.

21 July 1955 Home News

Manville had been throwing around the idea of building their own high school since at least 1938 when New Deal money was available. With this new urgency, they went to the voters and got approval for their first high school.

Hillsborough, apparently, felt no such urgency. 

Sure, the residential housing boom that began in the township around 1955 brought mostly young families with young children, but it's hard to believe that the Hillsborough school board couldn't figure out that those little kids would grow into teenagers. 

31 August 1963 Home News

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, students in Hillsborough might elect to go to high school in Somerville, or Bound Brook, or even Flemington - if they went at all - but in the post World War II period Hillsborough began sending all of their high school students to Somerville on a tuition basis, as did many other Somerset County municipalities. As Somerville High School began to overflow with students, the Somerville Board of Education warned the other towns that they would need to start making other plans.

Before the start of the 1963/64 school year, Hillsborough was told that 9th graders would no longer be accepted at Somerville. Hillsborough's only recourse was to retain the previous year's 8th graders at the Consolidated School (HES) and have them complete 9th grade alongside the 7th and 8th graders. And the school board began looking at sites to build a high school. 

Architect's model of the original Hillsborough High School plan.
12 July 1964 Home News

The board reportedly considered five different possible sites for the school, but only revealed to the public the final choice at the intersection of Amwell and Homestead Roads. On January 23, 1964, voters approved transferring $90,000 from surplus to capital outlay in order to buy the 50-acre parcel from Claremont Developers.

Plans were drawn up for a $2.9 million school that, according to a report in the Home News:

"...21 academic classrooms, four science laboratories, three industrial arts rooms, six business education rooms, 1,000-seat gymnasium, 600-seat auditorium, 100-seat library. 350-seat cafeteria, 125-foot tiered lectured room, and 10 small classrooms."

A referendum was set for July 1964, with a target date for completion of September 1966. Confident that the referendum would obtain voter approval, the school board passed on an offer of a five-year contract from Somerville to accept 10th, 11th, and 12th graders through 1969.

15 July 1964 Courier News

Unfortunately, four of the five township committee members, plus the tax assessor, did not back the school board, attacking the plan as being too expensive for taxpayers. On July 14, 1964, voters rejected the proposal by a better than 2-1 margin.

Woods Road School

On June 22, 1965, Hillsborough voters approved by a 2-1 margin an $896,000 bond issue for a new elementary school. Unlike the previous four schools built between 1950 and 1962 which started life as bare-bones 12, 16, or 20 room schools, the new Woods Road School would be a complete 25-room building right from the start, with an all-purpose room and all of the other amenities which had to be added to other schools later.

Woods Road School artist's rendering
21 June 1965 Home News

After the vote, Board President Morton Yeomans was quoted in the Courier News:

"We (the board) are extremely pleased that the citizens recognized the need for an elementary building. If they had not approved this proposal there would have been at least 20 classes on double sessions within the next 2 1/2 years."

23 March 1966 Home News

It seems incredible now, writing this in 2017 during a long period where student enrollment has been essentially flat and there has been no classroom space added in fifteen years, that a referendum defeat would have meant double sessions just a few years after the construction of TWO elementary schools in 1962 left the district with a classroom surplus! Such was the plight of Hillsborough during the rapid residential development of the 1950s through 1980s.

29 January 1968 Home News

The board was hoping for a Fall 1966 opening for the school, but as ground was not broken on the project until March 1966, they were fortunate to get the doors opened for students on April 17, 1967.

Woods Road School received its major upgrade  - $2.6 million for the new gym, library, computer lab, art room, and five small group-instruction rooms - as part of a $13.4 million district-wide construction referendum that was passed on March 17, 1992.

Triangle School

On June 7, 1960, as part of an ongoing effort to get ahead of constant and debilitating school enrollment increases, Hillsborough voters went to the polls and approved a $985,000 bond issue for the construction of not one, but two new elementary schools.

Triangle School, 2 August 1962 Courier News

A school on Woodfern Road had long been envisioned - indeed the land had been acquired years before - but the new 20-room school on Triangle Road required purchasing the 31-acre site. Initially planned for a January 1962 opening, some minor construction delays pushed the date back to the beginning of the 1962-63 school year.

15 June 1966, Home News

Actually, the very first students to occupy the school were a few hooligans who pried open a window and made some minor mischief in a couple of classrooms in the summer of 1962. They just couldn't wait!

Like most of the Hillsborough schools that were built before the municipal sewer system was ubiquitous in the central part of the township, Triangle School initially used a septic system with periodic pumping and disposal. After a few years when the school district sought to hook into the system used by Country Club Homes, the inadequacy of that system was brought to the fore.

4 August 1969 Courier News

The opening of the twin schools in 1962 gave Hillsborough an actual surplus of classrooms for the first and only time in its history. Although every room at Triangle was occupied, Woodfern started the school year with nine rooms in reserve. There were also three vacant rooms at the Consolidated School (HES), and two at Sunnymead. No children would need to be bussed to Montgomery, and the three older buildings - Bloomingdale, Flagtown, and Liberty - contributed an additional eleven empty classrooms to the reserve.

The December 1984 construction referendum brought the addition of the multipurpose room in 1987. Additional classrooms, a new cafeteria, new library, and computer rooms debuted in 1989.