To the Editor:
On the evening of April 27th, the Hopewell Valley Regional School District Board of Education held its regular monthly meeting. While the intended focus of the meeting had been the passage of the annual budget, it was the planned redistricting of a handful of current Bear Tavern students to Hopewell Elementary that quickly came to dominate the discussion. The message from members of the public in attendance (including myself) was clear: don’t make decisions about us without us.
Numerous adults filled the room – parents and neighbors, those directly and indirectly affected by the redistricting decision – all determined to share our thoughts, on not just the decision itself, but about the process used to reach it. And several of the affected children also claimed their three minutes at the microphone.
Us adults came armed with a petition, currently signed by over 260 Hopewell Valley residents, condemning the opaque decisionmaking process employed to date and imploring the Board and Superintendent to work with the families to chart a path forward. We also had a map that featured the proposed redistricting boundaries and counts of affected children (numbers which the district had quietly removed from the website the day before). The parents’ remarks were largely scripted; written to ensure that we hit every important point in a wholehearted effort to stop our children from being ejected from their beloved school.
The kids spoke their own truths, haltingly, bravely, about friends they didn’t want to lose, about schools that felt like home, and about being scared. They did what the adults in their lives have always told them to do and what the parents in attendance were modeling: they used their words. They asked to be heard.
And when, upon completion of the public comment period, Superintendent Treece appeared to immediately brush aside the community’s pleas, one of the children who’d spoken up began to cry, loudly and inconsolably. Her dad held and rocked her. Her handmade sign declaring “Save the BT Kids! We are a family!” lay on the ground at their feet.
Visibly uncomfortable, the school board would not look at the child. That moment perfectly summed up how this process has gone to date and why May 6th must be different.
How We Got Here
In mid-April, approximately 24 families at Bear Tavern Elementary received letters in the mail informing them that their children would be reassigned to Hopewell Elementary next year. Mine was one of them.
Despite Superintendent Treece’s assurance in the October Board Meeting that she would “communicate a lot with the parents before making moves,” referring to possible redistricting decisions, there was no prior notice to affected families, no community forum, no opportunity for input. For many families, a single sentence buried in a one page letter received just days before the April 27th meeting was the first we heard that their children’s school lives were about to be upended.
When shocked parents reached out to the Superintendent for an explanation, we were told the decision was “based on data.” And when we pressed for a more meaningful explanation of the process and sought avenues to engage, we received more vague assertions of expert involvement in the process and were informed that there would be no opportunity to appeal the decision.
In short, we were made to understand that our only option was to fall in line and denied an answer to our most basic question: why is the redistricting even happening?
The Numbers Don’t Add Up
In light of the District’s lack of transparency, a group of affected parents showed up on April 27th, hoping for answers.
A parent with a doctorate in biostatistics presented a careful analysis of the district’s own data. Her findings were straightforward: 34 students are being moved out of Bear Tavern, while 22 students from other schools are being moved in. That is a near-equal swap — one that, by the district’s own projections, frees up approximately four seats at Bear Tavern.
She asked the question that many in the room were thinking: if enrollment at each school is nearly the same before and after redistricting, what exactly is the rationale for uprooting children and putting them through this level of stress?
The answer, which made vague reference to the district having engaged a demographer, was wholly unsatisfying, leaving those to conclude that reducing overcrowding at BT is not the goal.
One father – a public policy professor at Rutgers – spoke to the many ways the current process deviated from best practice and implored the Superintendent and School Board to adjust course moving forward.
Another speaker questioned the ongoing assumption, stemming from prior School Board discussions, that the change would somehow lower demand for bussing. A mother of two, she shared how the District’s decision to allow one of her children to remain at BT (and receive bussing services) while sending another to Hopewell Elementary (where they would be eligible to receive separate bussing services) would create chaos for her family. And she questioned how such an outcome could possibly yield transportation efficiency gains, especially given that hers is not the only family in this situation.
Making the transportation argument even harder to sustain, Superintendent Treece herself acknowledged at the meeting that the district will likely need more buses in the future — not fewer — as new developments continue to come online.
Clearly, if transportation efficiency is the goal, this plan does not achieve it.
One after another, members of the public took to the podium, posing questions, expressing concern, and asking the assembled officials to do better moving forward.
What the District Got Right and What It Owes Our Community
To be clear: growth is real. The pressures on the district are real. No one in that room on April 27th disputed that Hopewell Valley is growing, that enrollment management is genuinely difficult, or that the board and administration face hard choices.
Many of the parents who showed up that night voted in favor of the referendum that expanded Bear Tavern. I did. We even put out a yard sign in favor of the referendum. We are not anti-growth. We are not trying to keep new families out. We want the same thing for every child in this district, however long they have been part of our community: stability and access to a high quality education at a school that feels like home.
And we want the Superintendent and School Board to do their part to create the community we all want and deserve. At a bare minimum that looks like a redistricting process that is transparent, considers alternatives, treats affected families as partners rather than obstacles, and takes seriously the social and emotional well-being of the children at the center of it.
To be blunt: a second grader should not have to cry in front of a school board to be taken seriously. A kindergartener should not have to beg to keep her friends. And a community of parents should not have to reverse-engineer a decision from a letter in the mail, armed with a saved screenshot of data that the district quietly deleted.
May 6th Must Be a Conversation, Not a Presentation
The district has announced a “Q&A” session for May 6th regarding the redistricting plan. The affected families are asking — publicly, clearly, and respectfully — that it be something more than that.
A Q&A, by its nature, positions the administration as the authority and the community as an audience. It is not a dialogue. It is not a forum. It does not create the conditions under which affected families can present alternatives, challenge assumptions, or collaborate on solutions. It is, at best, a more polished version of what already happened on April 27th.
What we are asking for on May 6th is a genuine community conversation: one in which affected families are treated as stakeholders whose input shapes the outcome, not as constituents to be managed. One in which alternatives are put on the table and seriously discussed. One in which the board commits to transparency about the data, the decision-making process, and the criteria by which any plan will be evaluated.
And it’s not just us – the parents and kids whose lives this redistricting decision is set to upend. Many members of the Hopewell Valley community feel the same, as evidenced by the over 250 signatures we’ve already collected on a petition challenging this redistricting process.
The window to get this right is closing. But it isn’t closed yet. Let’s get things right on May 6th!
Sincerely,
Josie Faass
Josie Faass, Ph.D is the parent of one current Bear Tavern Elementary student and a high schooler who is a proud BT alum. The petition can be found at: https://form.jotform.com/261112619366152
