District overview
Hillsborough Township Public School District
How Hillsborough's schools are paid for, who decides, and what changes this year.
Where does the money come from?
Hillsborough runs about 7,000 students in nine schools on roughly $182 million a year, and about $8 of every $10 comes from local property tax. New Jersey's funding formula decides state aid partly by 'local fair share', a measure of what a community could reasonably pay based on property values. Hillsborough's property values have risen 41.85 percent in five years, so the formula reads the town as better able to pay and sends less. The superintendent told the board the district's aid baseline has fallen by more than $7.5 million since 2019-20, about $26 million cumulatively, and 2026-27 takes a further cut of $519,761 plus the loss of a $1 million one-time grant. Meanwhile state law caps the levy increase at 2 percent with narrow exceptions. That gap is the district's central problem, and in 2026-27 it was closed mostly with savings: the board cut its own tentative 2 percent increase to 1.31 percent and drew $6,750,000 from capital reserve, $5.75 million more than the year before, plus the whole of its legal reserve.
Tax levy: $146.5 million of a $182 million budget
The adopted 2026-27 local tax levy is $146,455,968, a 1.31 percent increase after the board reduced the 2 percent in its own tentative budget on April 30, 2026. Total revenues and appropriations are $181,752,725. The district levies separately on Hillsborough Township and on Millstone Borough, which sends its students here.
State aid: $17.8 million, down $3.3 million in one year
State aid falls from $21,035,094 in the revised 2025-26 budget to $17,758,333 for 2026-27. Equalisation aid is almost gone at $190,417; the money that remains is categorical special education aid of $11,373,556, transportation aid of $3,987,466 and security aid of $1,306,894.
Benefits now equal 36.66 percent of salaries
Up from 30.23 percent in the revised 2025-26 budget. Health insurance rose 19 percent for 2026-27, about $5.3 million, and other insurance about 20 percent. The district moved to a self-insured health plan in 2026 to try to slow that, after earlier years in which it used a state health-benefits waiver to exceed the 2 percent cap.
Reserves are being spent down
Capital reserve is projected to fall from an estimated $8,698,754 in June 2026 to $1,948,754 in June 2027, the maintenance reserve from $626,248 to $126,248, and the legal reserve from $4,533,115 to zero. The strategy the administration described was to front-load one-time costs so the money lasts, but the same gap will need a different answer next year.
None of this means the district is in distress. It spends $21,267 per pupil, it improved its bond rating from AA-minus to AA in 2026, it has won roughly three quarters of a million dollars in competitive grants, and it is opening full-day kindergarten in the same year it cut its tax increase. The pressure is on how long reserves can keep absorbing the difference.
Where the district stands
Total revenues and appropriations across all funds, up from $179,986,566 revised for 2025-26.
A 1.31 percent increase, after the board cut the 2 percent in its own tentative budget on April 30, 2026.
Down $3,276,761 from $21,035,094 revised for 2025-26. Equalisation aid is $190,417.
Current expense excluding tuition paid out, transport and judgments. Up from $19,368 revised for 2025-26 and $17,515 actually spent in 2024-25.
Down from 7,215 in October 2024, with 6,979 estimated for October 2026. Special education full-time enrolment rises from 1,224 to an estimated 1,309 over the same period.
Up from 30.23 percent in the revised 2025-26 budget. Excludes pension and social security paid by the state on the district's behalf.
Down from an estimated $8,698,754 in June 2026 after a $6,750,000 withdrawal. The legal reserve falls from $4,533,115 to zero over the same period.
The district puts the cumulative effect over that period at about $26 million. Stated by the district, not independently derived here.
Cited by the superintendent as the reason the funding formula's local fair share measure reduces the district's state aid. Machine transcript of auto-generated captions.
Pre-kindergarten to grade 4, grades 5-6, grades 7-8 and high school, each with its own storage rule and the same four-step discipline ladder.
The district's agendas and minutes from June 2016 onward are published only on go.boarddocs.com, which refuses requests from this collection infrastructure. The meeting record here is built from 17 machine transcripts of the district's own recordings instead.
Sixteen dated board meetings from October 13, 2025 to September 28, 2026 plus one undated district recording on state aid and property assessments. Auto-generated captions, so names and figures spoken aloud can be garbled.
Major projects
Elementary redistricting and full-day kindergarten
In effect from September 2026One linked change: new boundaries for all six elementary schools, which freed the classroom space needed to run kindergarten all day. The district chose a small phased shift over a large one, offered rising fourth graders a stay-put option where space allowed if families drove them, and staffed the kindergarten expansion with 12 teachers, 10 lunch aides and two elementary supervisors.
- Three community engagement meetings announced for October 16 and November 13
- Board continues working through boundary options
- Timetable set: lines finalised, families notified April 10, stay-put option offered, full-day kindergarten confirmed on schedule
- Affected families emailed directly by their new principals
- Budget adopted with the 12 kindergarten teachers and 10 lunch aides funded
- First board meeting of the year with the new boundaries and full-day kindergarten in operation
Funding
29 new positions costing about $2.3 million including benefits, inside the 2026-27 general fund; offset by the loss of about $500,000 in Children at Play tuition revenue.
Rotating drop schedule at Hillsborough High School
Presented to the board; planned for 2027-28A move from eight periods a day to six on a rotating drop schedule. The district says it raises daily instructional time by 16 percent, lifts the credits a student can earn over four years from 140 to 160, and creates an access period every student shares at lunch so clubs and extra help meet during the school day. Staff visited Ridge High School in December 2025 to see it working, and two Hillsborough students presented in favour.
- Staff and students visit Ridge High School to observe a rotating schedule day
- Committee, administrators and two students present the proposed schedule to the board
- Potential 2027-2028 high school schedule published on the district website
Funding
No separate appropriation identified in the collected record; the cost named is professional development to restructure lessons for longer periods.
Policy 5516: bell-to-bell device rules
Adopted August 24, 2026 and in force for 2026-27New Jersey's P.L.2025 c.195 required districts to set bell-to-bell standards for personal internet-enabled devices. Hillsborough's answer is graded: a total ban on school grounds, buses, trips and after-school events for pre-kindergarten through grade 4, including non-internet phones; locker storage and bus-only use for grades 5 and 6; and progressively more latitude for grades 7 and 8. Every band has the same four-step discipline ladder ending in a mandatory parent meeting and a written prevention plan.
- Policy 5516 first reading; governance committee reviews the state regulation
- Policy 5516 adopted on second reading
- District publishes grade-band procedure tables for families
Funding
No cost identified in the collected record.
Capital work and security technology
Funded in 2026-27, drawing heavily on capital reserveThe 2026-27 budget pays for a new transportation and maintenance facility, ceiling grid and lighting replacement at Woods Road, a middle school renovation, an Auten Road gym roof, a replacement modular classroom at Triangle and a structural investigation at Auten Road, plus cameras, live weapon detection monitoring and licence plate readers. Lease purchases cover data centre hardware, districtwide security communications, Chromebook replacements and three school buses. The prior year's capital reserve list covered high school gym floors, bleachers, a scoreboard, track resurfacing and turf field replacement.
- Operations committee approves the Triangle modular classroom award, the Auten Road structural investigation and soliciting bids for tax-exempt lease purchase financing
- Capital list and security technology presented with the tentative budget
- Final budget adopted with the $6.75 million capital reserve draw
- District reports its bond rating improved from AA-minus to AA
Funding
A $6,750,000 capital reserve withdrawal, $5.75 million more than the year before, plus $500,000 from maintenance reserve and tax-exempt lease purchase financing the board authorised in March 2026.
Recent news
Built from documents collected each week from the Hillsborough Township Public Schools document library and from the district's own YouTube board-meeting playlist. www.htps.us answers HTTP 406 to automated requests, so documents come from the Apptegy/Thrillshare CMS API and are downloaded from files-backend.assets.thrillshare.com. The district's board agendas and minutes from 2016 onward exist only on go.boarddocs.com, which refuses requests from this infrastructure, so the narrative meeting record on this page comes from machine transcripts of the district's own meeting recordings. Every figure comes from a document stored from those sources.
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