Stafford Township School District

The Stafford Township School District is a community public school district that serves students in pre-kindergarten through sixth grade from Stafford Township, in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States.

Contents

• Stafford township school district
• Map of Stafford Township School District Stafford Township NJ USA
• Schools
• Administration
• References

Map of Stafford Township School District, Stafford Township, NJ, USA

The district participates in the Interdistrict Public School Choice Program at South Harrison Township Elementary School, having been approved in July 2002 to participate in the program. Seats in the program for non-resident students are specified by the district and are allocated by lottery, with tuition paid for participating students by the New Jersey Department of Education.

As of the 2014-15 school year, the district and its five schools had an enrollment of 4,575 students and 177.5 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 25.8:1.

The district is classified by the New Jersey Department of Education as being in District Factor Group "DE", the fifth-highest of eight groupings. District Factor Groups organize districts statewide to allow comparison by common socioeconomic characteristics of the local districts. From lowest socioeconomic status to highest, the categories are A, B, CD, DE, FG, GH, I and J.

For seventh through twelfth grades, public school students are served by the Southern Regional School District, which serves the five municipalities in the Long Beach Island Consolidated School District — Barnegat Light, Harvey Cedars, Long Beach Township, Ship Bottom and Surf City — along with students from Beach Haven and Stafford Township, together with students from Ocean Township who attend as part of a sending/receiving relationship with the Ocean Township School District. Schools in the district (with 2014-15 enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics) are Southern Regional Middle School (grades 7 and 8; 937 students) and Southern Regional High School (grades 9 – 12; 2,064 students). Both schools are in the Manahawkin section of Stafford Township.

At the time of its founding in 1957, the Southern Regional School District had a roughly equal number of students from Long Beach Island and Stafford Township. By 2016, the overwhelming majority of students were from Stafford Township, accounting for nearly 90% of enrollment. These demographic changes have led to significant discrepancies in the cost per pupil sent to the district from each community, with Harvey Cedars and Long Beach Township paying more than $200,000 per pupil, while Stafford Township's costs are $3,600 for each student. These widely different costs result from a formula that uses the taxable property value in each municipality to apportion costs, which means that municipalities with relatively high property values and small numbers of students pay a higher share of total district costs. Some residents of Long Beach Island communities are seeking to amend the formula to take advantage of a 1993 law that allows districts to use both property value and enrollment to allocate property taxes, though that would require passage of referendums in each municipality.

Also located in Manahawkin is the Marine Academy of Technology and Environmental Science. It is located within a quarter mile of Southern Regional High School. MATES is a comprehensive and challenging career high school. It is part of the Ocean County Vocational Technical School.