East Brunswick Officials Explained Why Redistricting Is Hard. Where It Stands Is Still Unclear.

On September 6, Eyes on EB published an article asking what happened to East Brunswick’s redistricting discussion. A demographer had delivered a districtwide elementary boundary study in February, but in the seven months since, according to Eyes on EB’s review of meeting recordings, the subject had not been substantively discussed at a single Board of Education meeting.

Four days later, on September 10, redistricting came up during the board’s segment answering questions submitted by residents. Board President Marianne Tanious put it plainly to the superintendent: “where are we with redistricting.” (video, 57:44)

The answers that followed addressed the gap directly. “Just because it hasn’t been talked about doesn’t mean work has not been happening,” Business Administrator Joseph Crotchfelt said. (video, 1:01:38)

The next ten minutes were welcome, and they were informative. Superintendent Dr. Evelyn Mamman and Crotchfelt described, at length, why a boundary change is complicated. They credited behind-the-scenes route and transportation work. And they sketched a tentative sequence ending in implementation in September 2027.

Residents who have followed this issue closely already understood why redistricting is difficult. Those complications were apparent during the February meetings. The September 10 exchange was not a scheduled presentation, and officials should not have been expected to produce maps, cost estimates, or a finished proposal in response to a community question. They did provide something the public had not heard in months: confirmation that work is continuing and a tentative sequence leading toward September 2027. What remains unclear is how far that work has progressed and what residents will actually see when the district returns with a formal update.

What officials said is making this hard

The complications were real, and they deserve to be reported fairly.

Mamman said the goal should not be simply to move boundaries, but to create something sustainable and grounded in the district’s core values. That is close to what residents have been asking for. The public discussion has not been a demand to redraw lines for their own sake, but a request for clear goals, measurable standards and a transparent process for determining whether redistricting would actually improve conditions.

The strategic plan itself does not identify redistricting, attendance boundaries or school utilization as specific priorities. It does, however, call for public input, transparent decision-making, timely information and measurable progress. Mamman connected any future redistricting process to those broader values, but did not establish a timeline or explain how far the district’s analysis has progressed. (video, 58:22) The district’s strategic plan establishes broad values and goals, but it does not contain specific benchmarks, deadlines, or performance targets. Instead, it says it will develop those measures through annual action plans and performance indicators.

Crotchfelt’s explanation provided useful context about the district’s thought process and the number of variables involved. It did not, however, provide a clear picture of where the district currently stands. Residents still do not know what work has been completed, whether any options are being evaluated, what measurable goals would determine whether redistricting is warranted or when the district expects to present its findings publicly. (video, 1:02:07)

Mamman added class sizes, new registrations in parts of town, and new developments where some children are bused “because the sidewalk isn’t done yet.” If the district cannot count on a crossing guard at a proposed stop, she said, “that’s not something that we take care of.” (video, 1:05:07)

Both acknowledged the public reaction. “We want to be transparent,” Crotchfelt said, while warning of “feedback that we might not be prepared for.” Board member Anna Braun, recalling decades of boundary fights, called the subject “very emotional.”

Crotchfelt also made a point worth underlining. Cost, he said, “can’t be the only driving factor. If that’s the only driving factor, this will fail.”

These are not new discoveries

None of this is wrong. But most of it is the ordinary substance of redistricting, the reason a district commissions a study in the first place, and much of it was already on the public record in February.

When the study was presented on February 5, the complexity of redistricting was already clear. The demographer and board discussed grandfathering, transportation and which new housing developments had been included in the projections. Business Administrator Joseph Crotchfelt said the next phase would involve building new routes, comparing staffing and class sizes, and adding a financial analysis (video, 1:38:22).

By the February 19 meeting, the emotional concerns were also firmly on the record. Residents raised the possibility of siblings being assigned to different schools, questioned whether the Brunswick Square redevelopment had been considered and described how strongly families felt about changing schools. The board opened that meeting with a prepared response to the emails it had received.

The district and the public therefore understood both the practical and emotional challenges by February. What remained was the work of turning the study into routes, costs and options the community could eventually evaluate.

Some of the September 10 details, such as the criteria for bus stops, unfinished sidewalks and crossing guards, had not come up in the earlier public discussion Eyes on EB reviewed. They are still the kind of practical questions any boundary plan must answer.

Explaining complexity is useful. It is not the same as showing how that complexity is being resolved.

The status quo affects children too

Much of the September 10 discussion, like much of the public conversation in February, focused on protecting children from the disruption a boundary change would cause. That concern is legitimate. Moving roughly 854 elementary students, the figure in the district’s study, would upend school routines, friendships and family schedules.

But leaving the current boundaries in place also affects children, and that side received far less attention on September 10.

Demographer Ross Haber gave the board a concrete example: 86 students in a pocket of the Lawrence Brook area are bused to Memorial. “It means longer rides,” he said, adding that the pattern “exists throughout the district.” (video, 1:05:15) He described the proposed realignment as a trade-off. Children who have made friends at their current schools would be separated from some of them, but they would be returning to schools in their own neighborhoods, with “shorter ride times.” The realignment also “eliminates most of the crossover of Route 18.” (video, 1:09:25)

Several people who now sit on the board described those consequences in human terms while campaigning in 2025.

At the East Brunswick Education Association’s candidates’ forum in September 2025, Antoinette Evola said her own children had classmates they could not have playdates with outside school because those classmates lived all the way over by Warnsdorfer Elementary, and those classmates, in turn, attended a school apart from the children on their own streets. “Those students couldn’t make friends with their neighbors,” she said. “When you look at the map, the way it’s set up, it does not make sense at all.” Citing 2024 enrollment, she said “the schools are not evenly distributed.” (video, 38:15)

At the same forum, Tanious raised fairness between buildings, noting that “not every school has a gym” (video, 32:24). Liwu Hong said small pockets of students were being assigned to remote elementary schools and that “this issue must be addressed” (video, 34:37).

In February, Tanious told the public that not every email the board received opposed a change. Some, she said, were from parents who wrote the opposite: “I’m actually upset that you’re not redistricting this year because I don’t like the way the class sizes are.” (video, 21:19)

Board Vice President Wilbur Pan was more direct. While stressing that the process would be long and would include community input, he said on February 19 that “redistricting has to be done,” calling it “something that is way overdue.” Looking at the study’s map for Central Elementary, he said the word that came to mind was “just nonsense,” and that “we can’t keep running a school district” by carrying students from where Cranbury Road meets Dunhams Corner Road nearly up to Route 18. “That’s just silly,” he said. (video, 15:18)

Protecting children from redistricting disruption is important. Protecting children also means weighing what happens to them if the boundaries stay as they are: longer rides, schools that do not match neighborhoods, uneven enrollment, and families whose children’s schoolmates live across town.

Difficult decisions are the job

Changing school boundaries is politically difficult, and East Brunswick’s own history shows how easily the subject gets set aside. Braun said on September 10 that the last large-scale redistricting came when “Ronald Reagan was in his first term.” As Eyes on EB documented in its earlier article, a 1982-83 plan to close elementary schools met parent opposition. A board member called redistricting urgent in January 2024, and no discussion followed. A 2025 proposal to close Bowne-Munro was floated and withdrawn within about seven weeks.

Board members are elected to make difficult decisions, including ones some families will not like. That a boundary change will upset some residents explains why the process requires care, consultation and a thoughtful transition. It does not, by itself, explain why seven months after the study was completed, the public still has not been told what work has been completed, what options are being evaluated or when it can expect the next public update.

Eyes on EB draws no conclusion about any individual’s motives, and nothing in the record suggests anyone has decided to avoid the subject. The question is about pace and visibility, not intent.

Credit for the work, and the limits of what the public can see

Mamman and Crotchfelt deserve fair credit for what they described. Mamman said Crotchfelt has “been working on those routes,” that the district “had to look at what the demographers said, what our current routes were,” and that the analysis includes its fiscal impact. “Now that work is ongoing,” she said, and “behind the scenes Joe has been doing that work.” (video, 1:00:26) Crotchfelt said he has been meeting with the transportation department weekly, except in the last couple of weeks, when opening school and work at Irwin School took priority. Mamman said the district is “doing the things that we need to do behind the scenes,” adding: “we’re working so hard.”

Eyes on EB’s September 6 article made the same allowance, noting that it was possible the modeling existed somewhere outside public view. Its question was never whether anyone was working. It was about public discussion and visible progress.

That distinction still holds. Administrative work may be happening privately. But residents cannot evaluate maps, routes, costs, savings, staffing effects or proposed solutions they have not been shown. Crotchfelt himself described the status plainly: “We haven’t done a redistricting,” he said, and “this still is an open item.” (video, 1:01:49)

What the timeline actually says

The most specific public schedule since February came near the end of the exchange. Most of it was hedged. (video, 1:04:44)

The September 2027 date matches what the public was told in February, when a resident asked for a target year and was told 2027-28. The target has not moved. The time to reach it has shrunk. If community outreach happens “hopefully” in early 2027, families would have roughly six to eight months between that outreach and the start of a redistricted school year.

Braun closed the exchange with its most forceful statement. “We’re doing it now,” she said. (video, 1:06:44) It was a clear signal of intent. It was not accompanied by a motion, a directive to the administration, a scheduled presentation date or a vote.

Why a close follower could leave without clear answers

Put the pieces together and the picture is incomplete in specific ways:

• What has been completed? Officials described work in progress: routes, transportation meetings, fiscal analysis, bus-stop criteria. They did not identify any finished component or show any of it.
• What will the public see next? Possibly information in October and possibly a presentation in November, without a date, a format or a description of what it will include.
• When will families be consulted? The November presentation was described as a way “to get some preliminary feedback,” with broader outreach “hopefully” in early 2027.
• How firm is September 2027? It is “the plan,” but it rests on a sequence that officials repeatedly qualified, and no board action has set it.
• What will it cost or save? Mamman listed cost and savings among the things still to be worked out.

None of the three board members running for re-election on November 3 (Evola, Timothy Cummings and Laurie Herrick) made substantive remarks during the September 10 exchange. 

The bottom line

The September 10 discussion was welcome. The subject returned to the board’s table after seven months, and officials offered more explanation than the public had heard since February. The administration’s behind-the-scenes work deserves credit.

But acknowledging complexity is not the same as demonstrating progress. Seven months after the demographic presentation, residents still need a clear account of what has been completed, what they will see next, and how the district intends to reach September 2027.

How we reported this. This article is based on the district’s official recordings of the September 10, 2026, February 5, 2026 and February 19, 2026 Board of Education meetings; the recording of the East Brunswick Education Association’s September 29, 2025 candidates’ forum; the September 10 agenda; the approved minutes of the February 5 and February 19 meetings; and Eyes on EB’s September 6 article and underlying research. Quotations from meeting recordings were checked word-for-word against multiple transcriptions of the audio, and speakers were confirmed using video, meeting minutes, moderator introductions and meeting context. Where transcriptions disagreed, we paraphrased. Wording from the demographic study is quoted from the approved February 5 minutes. Official minutes of the September 10 meeting had not been posted when this article was written. Eyes on EB did not contact the district for this article. We attribute no motive to any board member or administrator.