$6K OK'd to Study Regional Enrollment Trends

Citing a shift in enrollment trends, along with the first budget season without knowing the projection of incoming students has led the West Morris Regional Board of Education to commission a demographer and produce a study analyzing the area’s high school’s headcount.

The board unanimously approved a $6,000 expenditure at its May meeting to hire Whitehall & Associates to conduct the study, which will analyze everything from live birth rates to real estate trends over a five-year period.

Whitehall & Associates will be soliciting information from the four K-8 districts that send students to West Morris Central and Mendham High School as well.

“We didn’t receive any resistance from (the other districts),” Board Secretary Doug Pechanec told the board members. “This will help them know what’s going on as well as help us.”

Pechanec recommended a new study be conducted each year, which would come at a cost of $3,000 if the board stays with the same firm.

“I don’t believe it’s a tremendous amount of money for such vital information,” Pechanec said.

The 2012-13 school year was the first in the district’s history for Mendham High School to have a higher enrollment than Central.

“The Mendham High School population just continued to grow, grow and grow,” Superintendent Mackey Pendergrast told Patch. “Less students are going to private schools, and we’re starting to see families from Europe moving to the area for the IB program.

“Right now, Mendham is just bursting at the seams,” Pendergrast said.

The enrollment issue led Pendergrast and the board to recently approve a policy that would allow up to 100 Mendham High School to attend Central to balance the headcount problem.

With the board’s vote, Whitehall & Associates was set to begin conducting the study immediately with expectations of it being finished by August.