Sunnymead School

In June of 1957, the Hillsborough Township school district was out of space, out of money, and out of time. In 1954 voters approved a $500,000 13-classroom addition to the 1950 Consolidated School (HES) designed to allow the district to accommodate up to 1,100 pupils total. Now two years later, officials were projecting 1,255 for the 57-58 school year - an increase of almost 20% - due to the build-out of housing developments at Green Hills and Country Club Homes. The immediate solution was to rent space from Montgomery Township, including a sub-standard basement room at the Harlingen School, and utilize the sub-standard rooms at the Liberty School and the Bloomingdale basement.

Artist's rendering of the proposed Sunnymead School,
26 September 1957 Home News

The long-term solution was to build a new $400,000 12-classroom school on a 26-acre tract fronting on Sunnymead Road. The problem was that because of the 1954-55 expansion the district had exhausted its borrowing power. In due course, permission was granted from the state to exceed borrowing capacity, and on October 1, 1957, voters approved a $425,000 bond issue for Sunnymead School.

Suunymead ground-breaking ceremony,
28 May 1958 Courier News

A ground-breaking ceremony was held on May 27, 1958, with one important question remaining to be answered: Would the school utilize an appropriated $15,000 to construct its own sewage disposal plant, or could a deal be worked out to connect to the Manville sewer system. The cost to build the sewer line in Hillsborough was estimated to cost Hillsborough $50,000 - $35,000 of which would need to be picked up by the township as it was more than the $15,000 budgeted. The matter became entangled with negotiations over extending Brooks Boulevard to Route 206 and then was ultimately dropped by the school board in September.

Sunnymead School open house,
9 November 1959 Home News

By that time the new school year had started, and with Sunnymead School still far from completion, an overcrowded district resorted to using the South Branch Grange Hall to educate 45 students, as well as continuing to rent from Montgomery and use the sub-standard rooms. In the summer of 1959 the Country Club Homes Civic Association helped to move seven classrooms of furniture from the Harlingen School, and two from the Grange Hall, to make the school ready for a September opening.

A 1965 expansion added the gym on the south side of the school, and the 1989 expansion at the rear of the school doubled the capacity from 300 to 600 students and cost $2.4 million.

In 2009 Sunnymead became the second of Hillsborough's current schools to celebrate its 50th anniversary.