Millstone schools out of space
Middle school
way over capacity,
superintendent says

MIGUEL JUAREZ staff A typical lunch period in the Millstone Township Middle School’s all-purpose room last week. Because of the overcrowding, some students have to eat lunch on the stage.

BY PATRICIA A. MILLER

Staff Writer

When Superintendent of Schools William Setaro arrived on the scene back in 2000, he already knew the Millstone Township School District had space problems.

"We had the projections," Setaro said last week. "We knew we were going to be in trouble."

Almost four years later, the space problems have multiplied.

Roughly 850 students are crammed into the district’s 10-year-old middle school, a building the state Department of Education says should hold 324, Setaro said.

It takes four lunch periods to move all the middle school students through a mealtime in the all-purpose room, which does double duty as a cafeteria and an auditorium.

"It’s what I call a no-purpose room," Setaro joked during a tour of the building with a visitor last week. "It’s not good for anything."

And space in the all-purpose room doesn’t come easy. Every seat at the tables is taken, and some students have to eat their lunches on the stage.

"We call this our mezzanine dining," Setaro shouts over the din. "We put a railing up so the kids won’t fall off."

The narrow hallways in the middle school are a tight squeeze, especially when classes change, the superintendent said.

"When the bell rings, it’s like a cattle drive," he said. "If a student happens to drop a book, you don’t dare pick it up. You’ll be trampled by a sea of humanity."

"And believe it or not, these are good kids," Setaro added. "They are much better behaved than the typical middle school kid."

Setaro has run out of classroom space.

Some kindergarten and middle school students have their classes outside of the schools, in narrow trailers surrounded by chain-link fencing.

When it came to dealing with the overcrowding, Setaro had two choices — either use the trailers or increase class size. He opted for the trailers as a temporary solution.

By next year, all 10 kindergarten classes will be housed in trailers. It’s not an ideal situation, said kindergarten teacher Lisa Kennedy, who in September will be teaching in a trailer.

"I’m not looking forward to working in a trailer," she said. "There’s a lack of space. And kindergartners can be very active. They need room to interact."

Despite the results of the referendum, the trailers are a temporary solution. The state only allows them to be used for a certain period of time, Setaro said.

"The education is not the same in a trailer as it is in a regular classroom," he said.

The trailers, or "cottages" as some of the teachers call them, are not that easy to get to, especially in rainy, snowy or cold weather, the superintendent said.

"The first snowstorm, we didn’t have these covered," Setaro said, pointing to the wooden walkways that lead to the trailers. "We had lots of problems with the kids falling and slipping."

So the school’s maintenance staff put up plywood walls and roofs over the walkways.

The middle school students change classes in the cold because the walkways are unheated. There are no bathrooms in the middle school trailers, the superintendent said.

"They have to go back in the school building," he added.

The desks in the middle school trailers are jammed so tightly that some students have to climb over another student’s desk to get to their own, he said.

Storage space in the trailers is limited to several bookcases and cabinets.

The middle school’s media center has also lost space. Two foreign language classes are now held in a portion of the room.

"My teachers make the best of it," Setaro said. "They do a great job."