When New Providence High school first opened in 1958, its graduating class was made up of only 88 students. Now, after about 60 years, New Providence High school has around 660 students and the middle school has around 360 students. While the school has continued to grow since its inception, there has been very little work done to expand the school to account for the influx of students. While this has worked out fine for the town so far, a new problem has presented itself to the town in the form of a large apartment complex being built near the Allen W. Roberts Elementary School, or A.W.R. This new construction project has a lot of potential, but it has also created anxiety in some parents and students as they ponder whether or not we need to expand the school to fit all the new incoming students.
New Providence itself is not a very large town, but it still hosts two elementary schools that all feed into the middle school and high school, and this has caused overcrowding at, not just the high school, but the elementary schools as well. When I first moved here in 2017, I was told I was unable to go to A.W.R. due to all the classes being full. I ended up having to go to Salt Brook, even though I lived extremely close to A.W.R. The elementary schools have continued to grow since then, and we’re very quickly running out of room for new students at any New Providence school.
When faced with this issue, many are unsure of what the best course of events is. One option for the town is that it can expand the current high and middle school, possibly stretching into the field behind the school, while another may be to separate the middle and high school and to purchase new land to build it on. A third possible solution would be to add a second story to the school, which may be the most plausible option to expand the school. These solutions come with many problems of their own, such as the money necessary to build a whole new school or to even just expand the current school. Tax payers in New Providence are still paying $217 each year due to the 2006 and 2022 bond referendums, and it will still be a year or two before the 2006 referendum is paid off, which will bring the price down to $52. While expanding the school may be important, many are not going to be willing to pay more money because, after putting so much money towards the 2022 bond referendum, most will not be able to reap the rewards because their children will be graduating.
Overall, expanding the school will be an expensive and time consuming endeavor that may turn out to be useless in the future if the school grows any larger. While it would be beneficial to prepare and make changes to the school to make it larger, it will end up being far too expensive and most likely won’t be approved until members of the community are done paying off the current bond referendums.