Smaller Districts, Bigger System: Watchung Hills Study Examines Benefits of Regional Consolidation

Written by an Educator in our Community

Five small Somerset and Morris County school districts, three of which only consist of one or two schools, were involved in a district consolidation study that was released in late 2025. Those five send/receive districts to and including Watchung Hills Regional High School (WHRHS) districts are:

• Long Hill Township School District (900 students in three school buildings in Grades K-8)
• Warren Township School District (1,600 students in five school buildings in Grades K-8)
• Watchung Borough School District (700 students in two school buildings in Grades K-8)
• Green Brook Township Schools (700 students in two school buildings in Grade K-8)
• Watchung Hills Regional High School (1,700 students in one school building in Grades 9-12)

Background: Local level

Students who attend Watchung Hills Regional High School come from four K-8 districts: Long Hill, Warren, Watchung, and Green Brook. Additionally, Watchung Hills Regional High School is its own district. Each of these five districts have their own Superintendent, their own Director of Special Services, their own Business Administrator, and their own curriculums, and not to mention, five separate governing bodies, which allows for less streamlining and a greater likelihood of inconsistencies.

Consolidating these districts will better streamline the process.

Background: State level

For some years, the New Jersey State Legislature has been considering legislation that would require school districts with fewer than 500 students to consolidate. The N.J. State Senate bill mandating mergers received mixed reviews.

Like Watchung Hills’ sending districts, many of these small districts send their students to a large regional high school. There is debate of whether there should be forced or voluntary consolidation, but the point is, it is being explored.

The Watchung Hills study

The five districts (Long Hill, Warren, Watchung, Green Brook, and Watchung Hills Regional High School) partnered with Rowan University to explore shared services and regionalization. The presentation is an information-only study, does not force any actions, and can be found in its entirety here.

Current challenges:

• WHRHS 9th grade teachers report “significant differences” in English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies, as there are four different programs to teach and assess students across the four K-8 districts.
• Daily instructional minutes per day vary between the four K-8 districts.
• Not included in this study, but the World Language offerings are also different from each of the four middle schools to WHRHS.

Benefits of consolidation would include: 

• Expanding Preschool programming as total classroom availability in a regionalized district would accommodate more Preschool through shared services.
• Aligning K-8 programs, assessment tools, and instructional time would be a step towards greater consistency in student skills. One centralized regional curriculum office would help support this.
• K-8 special education programs would be able to keep more students in-district with consolidated services and programs through WHRHS. This includes common screeners and common progress monitoring.
• A regionalized district may offer multilingual students (previously known as “English as a Second Language” students) a more robust ESL program.
• Extracurricular programming varies from district to district. A larger regional district with larger enrollment may offer increased opportunities and activities.
• There will likely be increased staff efficiencies.
• The formation of a unified district could eliminate the need for redundant administrative positions in five districts currently, where tasks that are currently being completed five times could be completed once.
• Any cost savings could save money or be redirected back to educational programming.

There are virtually no disadvantages found. The work that would need to occur to create a unified salary guide and other union contract details, such as insurance, working hours, and association rights would take time.

As a result of this study, the process is for each local Board of Education, as a governing body, to have collaborative conversations on what is best for the students and the districts as a whole.

Consolidating these districts, totaling approximately 5,600 students, would be just about the size of better-resourced districts Millburn (4,600 students), Bernards/Basking Ridge (4,800 students), Scotch Plains-Fanwood (5,800 students), Westfield (6,000 students), and Livingston (6,300 students).

What about Mountainside?

NJ21st has previously written about the benefits of a Berkeley Heights and Mountainside school district consolidation. Like Long Hill, Warren, Watchung Borough, and Green Brook, Mountainside is another small K-8 school district that sends their students to a regional high school, where Mountainside has approximately 800 K-8 students between two school buildings. 

The article emphasized that consolidation would promote consistency between the Berkeley Heights’ Columbia Middle School (Grades 6-8) and Deerfield School (Grades 3-8) in Mountainside, there could be more options for in-district teacher transfer between the two districts (especially for Mountainside as it stands), and keeping Mountainside students at GLHS. The send-receive agreement is currently being negotiated with an expiration date of June 2027. With a consolidated Berkeley Heights-Mountainside district, these negotiations would not have to occur every five years as Mountainside students would be locked into Governor Livingston High School. Most of all, there would likely be better consolidation with curriculum and special services, as mentioned in the WHRHS study.

The only update involving any study of Berkeley Heights consolidating with another school district was a grant on the agenda at their January 22nd Board of Education meeting, but was ultimately tabled to a future meeting. It was not known of which district or districts Berkeley Heights has an intention to consolidate with.

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