Hillsborough superintendent says 85 Millstone students were miscoded; Millstone to see larger share of school taxes

Superintendent Michael Bowlby told the Hillsborough Township Committee on March 25 that a data problem in the school district’s registration records has identified 85 students who live in Millstone Township but were not coded as Millstone residents; only 17 had been coded that way in the district database.

Bowlby said the discrepancy was discovered during an elementary redistricting review meant to equalize enrollment for fall 2026 and that the district has put new controls in place to prevent a recurrence. He told the committee the change will increase Millstone’s portion of the school tax burden and that he will meet with Millstone’s mayor this week to discuss next steps.

The discovery matters because the municipal property tax allocation between sending and receiving municipalities depends on the number of resident students. "We had 85 students in Millstone who attend the Hillsborough Township public schools, But only 17 were coded as living in Millstone," Bowlby said at the meeting. He added the discrepancy dates back several years and is being corrected going forward.

Bowlby described how the error occurred: after a statewide reorganization of “send and receive” relationships about 2009, registering students was handled at individual school buildings and secretaries sometimes relied on address fields rather than an explicit residency selector. That, he said, allowed students with Millstone addresses to be miscoded as Hillsborough residents when their mailing addresses used Hillsborough formats.

To fix the process, the district has centralized registration in the board office, created an explicit residency field in its registration system (“Are you a Millstone resident or are you a Hillsborough resident?”), and obtained a master list of Millstone addresses to cross-check registrations. Bowlby told the committee those steps establish multiple controls to reduce human error in future registrations.

Bowlby also said the board will present a finalized budget on April 28 and encouraged members of the public to attend two upcoming school-board budget meetings on April 7 and April 28 to ask questions. "We're on a timeline ... The next day we have to start pressing buttons and putting it in the state system," he said, referring to the district’s budget submission timeline.

Mayor Don Ciccarelli and committee members received the report. Ciccarelli said the township will monitor developments but emphasized the board of education’s primary role: "...as this evolves, we may have to be consulted on steps forward. But for right now, a lot of this lies with the school board and what they decide," he said.

The superintendent described the likely fiscal effect for Millstone as larger than for Hillsborough in per-student terms because of Hillsborough’s larger enrollment. He estimated the per-student tax impact on Millstone could be on the order of tens of dollars per student, while the net impact on Hillsborough would be small.

Bowlby said he had informed Millstone officials at the same time he informed the township committee and that he will continue to provide updates to the committee staff. He emphasized that the miscoding predated his tenure and that the district has implemented corrective steps to prevent recurrence.

The discussion was informational only; the committee did not take formal action related to the school budget during the meeting. Bowlby directed residents with questions about the school budget to the board of education meetings and to district staff for detailed inquiries.

For public follow-up, the superintendent gave the dates and locations for the two school-board sessions where the finalized budget will be presented: April 7 and April 28, 2025, both at 7:30 p.m. at Auten Road Intermediate School (per his statements at the meeting).