During the Tuesday, August 8, Board of Education meeting, Allen Barnett of DiCara Rubino Architects reviewed a timeline of Burnet Hill and Hillside learning annex construction. Both anticipated units are currently waiting to be delivered, shipping from Georgia.
The anticipated arrival of the learning annexes is going to bring in “a lot of activity rather quickly,” according to Barnett.
The annexes are modular units, and have been one of the district’s substantial renovation projects in recent months. The projects were initially planned to begin construction in mid-July, but that start date has been pushed with delays in permits.
Permits for Hillside are expected to be released from the building department this week, Barnett said, with construction to start August 14, focusing on underground work. The following week, the annex is expected to be delivered, and a final inspection from the township is planned for the week of September 11. The first day of school is September 5.
Burnet Hill will be one week behind, as permits are anticipated to be released the week of August 14. Site construction may take longer, Barnett noted, because of the “sewer ejector pit and pump.”
Still, he says, the annex is expected to arrive the week of August 28, and complete with final inspections by September 18.
“Hopefully we’ll meet with [contractors] and just keep them on target,” Barnett said.
Interior renovations have also been taking place this summer, according to manager of buildings and grounds Jamie Perrette. The staffhas expanded classroom space within Burnet Hill, Hillside and Livingston High School.
The additional instructional spaces come at a time where the district sees its highest count of school enrollment in ten years, particularly concentrated at the elementary level.
There was a drop in enrollment the 2020-21 school year, which superintendent Matthew Block attributes to COVID. Students had been withdrawing for other avenues of schooling, he says.
Since, the district has seen an overall enrollment increase of 276 students. Across the elementary schools, enrollment reached 2,446 students in 2020, and is now set at 2,714. Two additional pre-K sections have been added at Burnet Hill Elementary School to keep student classes within guidelines: a capacity of 22 students in pre-K to second grade; and a capacity of 25 students in third to fifth grade.
“At this moment, unless the trend really starts pushing and we have a huge influx of students, I do not believe we will have any sections that are more than one student over guidelines,” Block said at the meeting. “That’s all because of the planning that we did, and the foresight of adding those three new sections.”
Secondary schools – the middle schools and the high school – have only seen an increase of four students between the past school year and this upcoming school year, with numbers collected on August 8.
“If I was making predictions, which I try not to, but I’ll make a general one,” he said, “we will probably steadily get some more students, in fact, particularly at elementary, between now and the end of the summer. Maybe a handful at secondary, but we believe it’s nothing we can’t accommodate.”
