Too Many Bosses, Not Enough Students - A Case for School District Unification in Union County
Consolidating two school districts would save on administrative costs, create curriculum alignment, and keep Mountainside students at Governor Livingston High School.
Consolidating two school districts would save on administrative costs, create curriculum alignment, and keep Mountainside students at Governor Livingston High School.
-Written by an Educator in our District
School district consolidation is an issue that has been studied at the state level in recent years. Currently, New Jersey has 590 school districts, which is more than the number of municipalities in the state. Of those, about 253 districts have fewer than 1,000 students enrolled, meaning each of these 253 districts has their own administrative staff (Superintendent, School Business Administrator, Director of Special Services, etc.) for fewer than 1,000 students. Tiny districts currently spend more per pupil, 17 percent more on average, than larger school districts, mostly for these administrative reasons. Many of these tiny districts are one or two school K-8 districts where students file into a regional high school in another district.
Mountainside is one of these tiny, K-8 districts that has two schools and approximately 800 students. Berkeley Heights (BHPS) has 2,300 students and six schools including Governor Livingston High School (GLHS), which Mountainside’s students attend as part of a send-receive relationship. Mountainside has too few students to have its own high school.
While no known formal discussions have taken place between consolidating Berkeley Heights’ K-12 district with Mountainside’s K-8, other than cost savings, reasons supporting this consolidation would go as follows:
Curriculum consistency: Ensuring that what is being offered to Columbia Middle School students in Berkeley Heights is being offered to Deerfield School students in Mountainside, and vice versa, as well as their elementary schools. An example of this is at the March 18th, 2025 Berkeley Heights Board of Education meeting, Board Member Sai Akiri noted that Mountainside does not have the collaborative classroom model for special education, and therefore, Mountainside students get surprised with the layout of instruction at GLHS. While administrators from Berkeley Heights and Mountainside have met to discuss curriculum alignment, keeping both districts under one Superintendent, one Board of Education, etc., would cement this alignment. This could also be effective in ensuring that the same middle school offerings, such as world language programs, are offered as Mountainside students have a disadvantage advancing to GLHS (not having an Italian program, not having as many enriched/honors classes in Mountainside, etc.).
Teacher transfer: Currently, if a teacher wanted to relocate from a Mountainside school to a BHPS school, they would have to resign their position from Mountainside and give up their tenure, and vice versa. Based on enrollment trends, administrators can move teachers between the BHPS schools and Mountainside.
Keeping Mountainside students locked in at GLHS: Every five years, Berkeley Heights and Mountainside renegotiate to keep Mountainside students attending GLHS versus going to another high school, such as Westfield or Springfield (Mountainside sent students to Jonathan Dayton in Springfield many decades ago). Consolidating school districts would eliminate the need to discuss, negotiate, and renew the current send-receive relationship every five or so years, as some of GLHS best students and student-athletes have come from Mountainside and therefore have complimented Berkeley Heights academics and athletics over these past decades.
Administratively, in a consolidation where BHPS is approximately three times as large as Mountainside, it is likely that Berkeley Heights’ Central Office administration would take on the workload that Mountainside already has. At this moment, Mountainside schools’ administration consists of a Superintendent, School Business Administrator, Supervisor of Special Services, Curriculum and Instructional Support coordinator, Maintenance Supervisor, and Technology Coordinator. While Berkeley Heights’ central office would absorb the Superintendent and School Business Administrator roles, their Supervisor of Special Services, for example, could live on in their current role, reporting to the BHPS K-12 Director of Special Services, or as a K-5 Supervisor for all special services under a hypothetical Berkeley Heights-Mountainside consolidation, while BHPS has an existing Supervisor of Special Services who focuses on Grades 6-12. Similar arrangements could be made for Mountainside’s current Curriculum and Instructional Support coordinator, Maintenance Supervisor, and Technology Coordinator positions.
Close to Berkeley Heights, school district consolidation has been studied by the Watchung Hills Regional High School District and its four receiving districts: Long Hill (900 students Grades K-8), Warren (1,500 students Grades K-8), Watchung (700 students Grades K-8), and Green Brook (800 students Grades K-8). All four of these districts feed into Watchung Hills Regional High School (2,000 students Grades 9-12), which is its own district (even though the regional high school is in Warren, separate from Warren’s own K-8 district). Currently, these five districts combined have five Superintendents, five School Business Administrators, five Directors of Special Services, five Board of Educations, and four K-8 curriculums. While one can always cite alignment between districts, having one unified district would create the most consistency in all of the above factors. As of 2022, Watchung Hills received grant money from the state to study district consolidation.
One success story of school district consolidation occurred in 2014 when four districts in Hunterdon County - Stockton, West Amwell, Lambertville, and South Hunterdon Regional High School, all combined into a K-12 South Hunterdon Regional School District. The first three districts were each a small K-6 district, each with one school and as few as 200 students, which fed into South Hunterdon, a Grade 7-12 one-school district. Voters approved the consolidation by referendum vote.
A full list of K-4, K-6, and K-8 districts that could be consolidated can be found here.
For the reasons of curriculum alignment, equity in class and program offerings, finances, the fact that Mountainside students already attend Governor Livingston High School (as a part of Berkeley Heights Public Schools), and that district consolidation has occurred and being studied elsewhere in our region, Berkeley Heights and Mountainside should consider coming together to form one unified district.
NJ21st allows for confidentially sourced articles from employees of local government agencies or volunteers of non-profits whose organizations would take retaliatory action against their employees and , in the case of volunteer organizations, officers for exercising their right to express an opinion about local government. We have verified the confidential source for this article and have met with him/her face to face.