Hits keep coming

School matters lie outside the purview of the mayor and Borough Council, but are still potential public comment topics at the municipal governing body’s meetings.

That was again the case on Tuesday, March 25. Mayor Jack Mikolajczyk and council members heard another call for a re-registration of all Middlesex Borough students. Audience members also criticized school officials’ spending and refusal to answer constituents.

Two Board of Education members – Sharon Schueler and Shannon Quinn – were among the audience members at the council meeting. Neither responded to the comments about the school system.

Borough resident Kevin Redzinski questioned why the school board is not conducting a re-registration, noting the public hearing on the 2025-26 district budget is scheduled for next month. The board recently unveiled a spending plan for the next academic year which includes a 2% tax increase.

Re-registration is periodically mentioned by audience members at school board sessions. Some taxpayers question whether there are students in Middlesex schools who do not legally reside within the municipality. Removing them from the district, they note, would lower the costs passed on in tax bills.

The state Department of Education (DOE) published the Taxpayers’ Guide to Education Spending last year. It calculated the Middlesex Borough district’s budgeted per-pupil spending at $19,298 for 2,007 students during the 2023-24 academic year.

If a re-registration were to result in the removal of 25 students who don’t reside in the district, the savings theoretically would total $482,450, based on the DOE statistics.

Redzinski addressed his concerns to Mikolajczyk, who was Board of Education president when a re-registration was done previously.

Mikolajczyk said that re-registration was conducted during a summer and identified 69 students who did not actually reside in Middlesex Borough but were being educated in its schools.

After the council meeting, Mikolajczyk estimated that past sign-up effort occurred at least 15 years ago. Parents were required to re-register all district students during summer recess, he told Inside – Middlesex. The process was handled by the district’s attendance officer, with the help of volunteers, the mayor said.

During a February 2024 meeting, a school board member suggested a new re-registration. School Superintendent Dr. Roberta Freeman replied that the effort would need to be done over multiple years since the related department consists of only one person.

Greene Avenue resident Rich Thomasey told the council that residents continue to ask questions at school board meetings but “our concerns fall on deaf ears.”

“They’re taking money right out of this town and they’re throwing it away,” added Thomasey, who was an educator for 43 years. He told council members that their job is being complicated by the board’s spending.

“They don’t talk and you can’t communicate with them,” concluded Thomasey, referring to school officials’ typical practice of not responding to public comments. 

Mikolajczyk convened a town hall forum last fall, at which residents discussed a variety of topics, including the school district.

Bruce Sanders of Venice Avenue told the mayor that he questioned why school officials have not responded to more than a half-dozen comments about the district from the town hall. Among the town hall attendees’ observations was that the district appears to be top-heavy with administrators. 

Schueler has said at public meetings that she forwarded the list of town hall comments to Freeman.

Sanders said, “I was not answered,” when he asked at a board meeting about the town hall list. 

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