Bernards Township Schools Come Alive When 5,249 Students Report for First Day

Parents kissed kindergarten students goodbye, second graders fled mommy's embrace and Ridge High School seniors waited Monday afternoon to get out of their newly acquired on-campus parking spots as the usual drama and activity of first day back at school unfolded in Basking Ridge.

This year, it was just a little later than usual.


The school system, which Schools Superintendent Nick Markarian reported on Monday night had 5,249 students enrolled in the K-12 district was opened to students one full week after Labor Day. (That's 69 more than last year, and new students were coming to sign up on the first day of class, Markarian told the Board of Education at Monday night's meeting.)

In setting the date on the calendar, Markarian last spring had said that he did not want to start school on Wednesday, schedule a day off for the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah and reopen again on Friday. Neither did he favor having a one-day first week with school starting on Friday — as was done in the Somerset Hills school district in neighboring Bernardsville.

This year's staggered choices for setting the first day of school in area school districts resulted in an odd situation for students such as Shane McIntire, a Ridge sophomore.

McIntire said his first day at Ridge had gone well — but it wasn't really his first day back at high school.

McIntire attends Somerset County VoTech in the morning — and that high school officially opened for the year last Wednesday, he said.

Two different start and end dates for same high school student

McIntire already has been attending VoTech for half-days prior to his first full day at both high schools on Monday. However, he said VoTech's school year also will end earlier than at Ridge High School, where the last day of class for students is scheduled to be June 20, 2014.

But McIntire said he is okay with easing into the school year with a half day at VoTech and ending his morning classes at VoTech before wrapping up his school year at Ridge next spring.

He added all of his teachers at Ridge this year seemed very nice.

Over on the other side of town, Mount Prospect Elementary School also was in for some praise from parent Kristie Pappas from The Hills section of Basking Ridge.

"Summer was great, but so is back to school," she said as she left the school grounds on Monday morning. "We need a little bit of structure."

Pappas had only good things to say about the way that back to school had been structured at Mount Prospect, where School Principal Joanne Hozeney and Assistant Principal Paul Ciempola greeted many of the incoming students.

At Mount Prospect, students come by the day before school starts to meet teachers, locate their classrooms and explore where they'll be spending their school year, she said. Her son, entering second grade, had even participated in a fun scavenger hunt to find out where lunches would be stored, and the reading area and more, she said.

Pappas added that the ability to buy a reasonably priced prepackaged school kit with everything her son needed for classroom — and pre-labeled with his name — also made the job of getting ready for school vastly easier.

She said drop-off went well and she left her son at the front of the school, where he was quite happy to leave and head to his classroom.

While a nearby kindergarten boy proudly clutched both mom's and dad's hands as he headed off to school, Pappas said her son informed her at the door, "I'll take it from here."

Ridge traffic solution still being worked on

Back at Ridge, the dropoff, arrival and exit of students remains a work in progress for the best way to handle traffic.

Senior Ben Abbate, who was driving out of the student parking lot at about 3 p.m., said he had made it easily to the student lot in the morning.

But in the afternoon, waiting at the light onto South Finley while in a vehicle with a couple of friends, Abbate reported, "I got out of school 30 minutes ago." 

Parents also were waiting at a line that snaked through one of the parking lots to pick up students even as buses were nearly gone.

That night, at the school board meeting, Ridge neighbor Parag Dhagat, who has questioned the validity and potential value of a plan to move and widen a driveway through the township health department as a proposed traffic improvement asked whether the board's agenda indicated that plan was being approved on Monday.

School Board Member William Koch responded that there has been no formal approval of plans for traffic flow renovations at the high school. He said the Board of Education on Monday gave approval for the plan to be filed with the state.

Board President Susan McGowan told Dhagat that the district also does not have final engineered plans. The plans still are in the phase of concept drawings, she told the township resident and next-door neighbor of the high school.