To the Editor and the families facing reassignment under HVRSD’s redistricting plan:
We know this is hard. But before you accept it as inevitable, consider these facts.
This has happened before — and the community acted. Around 2001, Elm Ridge Park families faced moving from Toll Gate Grammar to Hopewell Elementary. They showed up. The board listened. In 2002, Bear Tavern enrollment pressure was resolved not by shuffling kids, but by building Stony Brook Elementary to serve the Brandon Farms development. In 2014, Hopewell Grant families faced a recommendation to move their children from Stony Brook to Bear Tavern. They packed a BOE meeting. The board heard them and revisited the process.
Each time, residents who showed up changed the outcome.
The 2014 Future Planning Committee is the model — and we should demand one now.
Convened in February 2014 under Superintendent Tom Smith and Board President Lisa Wolff, the committee ran eight months and included school officials and residents from across Hopewell Valley. It produced a final report in October 2014 with three concrete recommendations: redistricting options, full-day kindergarten, and magnet programs. The board treated it as genuine community input — not a rubber stamp. That’s exactly how it should work. Participating in that committee also helped cultivate future community leaders — including Deborah Linthorst, who went on to serve as Board President. There are many residents across Hopewell Valley ready to volunteer for exactly that kind of committee again.
There are also options the district hasn’t publicly explored. One is sitting right in front of us.
The Admin building on South Main Street has served this community in many forms — built in 1929 as Central High School, it later became a junior school, and has housed district administration since 1966. It has been repurposed twice already. Could it be repurposed again to house Pre-K classes, freeing up elementary capacity across the district? Many districts locate their administrators within their schools, making leadership more accessible and buildings more useful. Has anyone asked that question formally? Not that we’ve heard. A Future Planning Committee would.
You have more power than you think. Use it.
Sincerely,
John Hart and Vanessa Sandom
John Hart and Vanessa Sandom are former Hopewell Township mayors and long-time Hopewell Valley residents.
“I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.” — Frederick Douglass
