Hillsborough Prepares To Shift Where Students Attend Schools For 2026-27

HILLSBOROUGH, NJ — As the new school year gets underway, the Board of Education(BOE) is already preparing to shake things up in the 2026-27 school year with redistricting.

An update on the redistricting process was offered at the Aug. 25 BOE meeting. The redistricting was prompted by rising student enrollment.

"Redistricting is indeed happening in the 2026-27 school year," said Superintendent Michael Volpe at the BOE meeting. "We are looking around Spring Break to let people know if they are switching schools. But redistricting does mean that some students who are going to some schools in 2025-26 will be going to different schools in 2026-27."

Assistant Superintendent Joel Handler, who is spearheading the process, said that the district has completed a comprehensive room analysis across all six elementary schools.

"We definitely determined that some of the schools are at capacity or above capacity to some extent. The assessment was based on detailed room utilization data, counting of spaces, and we looked at spaces dedicated to special ed and self-contained programs," said Handler.

Now the district is actively looking to its transportation department to see what it can handle based on what each school's possible student enrollment could comfortably contain.

"Working with the transportation department and looking at zones and seeing how we can adjust those attendance zones," said Handler. "The goal is to achieve an equalized student population across each school... That prevents overcrowding."

Handler noted that some schools have more capacity to hold more students than others do.

"Our goal is to see if we can maximize our space without overcrowding anyone based on borders and drawing redistricting signs," said Handler.

The district anticipates reviewing these findings with the administration over the next couple of weeks. More detailed options are expected later this fall.

The redistricting process began in August 2024 when the BOE voted to award a contract for a redistricting study to ARCBridge Consulting, which was set to begin on Sept. 1 at the contractual price of $42,995.

This will be the first time the district has undergone a full redistricting since 2002.

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