Student Population on the Decline, Study Says

A decline in recent years of the incoming student population in Franklin Lakes schools is expected to continue through 2018, according to a demographic study commissioned by the district.

The study, performed by Kinnelon-based Whitehall Associates, was published and presented to the board of education last month.

According the report, the total student population in Franklin Lakes has already dipped from 1,491 in the 2008-09 school year to 1,299 last year, a drop of almost 12.9 percent.

Board efforts address enrollment issues, such as uneven class sizes, in the district have in recent years proven controversial. In 2009, a recommendation from an efficiency committee to adopt a “modified Princeton System,” creating two schools for preschool to third graders and another for fourth and fifth graders, was tabled after residents overwhelmingly voiced their opposition in a survey taken by the district.

Earlier this year, the board added two kindergarten sections for the upcoming school year after parents voiced opposition to a plan to shift some incoming Colonial Road students to even out class sizes.

According to the study’s projection’s, which Superintendent Frank Romano called a “worst case scenario,” the incoming student population will continue dropping to as low as 960 by the 2017-18 school year.

“What you can’t account for is economy and construction,” Romano told the board last month.

Incoming students could be increased by as much as 57 in the next five years from housing developments in the works, according to the study, but potential construction at the High Mountain Golf Club, currently the subject of ongoing negotiations between the borough and developer Toll Bothers, was not considered in the study.

“What that will produce remains to be seen,” Romano said.

The developer there reportedly intends to construct as many as 1,000 units on the 130-acre site, which is currently zoned for one-acre plots, but according to information the borough provided to the demographers, negotiations are expected to meet somewhere in the middle.

“It’s not going to impact us for the next two or three years, that much we know,” Romano said.