Original Research by School Decision on Costello Prep
Costello Prep is an alternative school in Tabernacle, New Jersey, serving grades eight through eleven. It is part of the Office of Education Juvenile Justice Commission, a district that operates within the state’s juvenile justice system. This is not a neighborhood school that a family chooses by address. It is a specialized setting for students who are involved with the juvenile justice system, and enrollment is determined by that system, not by a family’s residential zone or application.
The school is located on Carranza Road in Tabernacle, a low-density, semi-rural township in Burlington County that sits within the New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve. Tabernacle is a car-dependent community of roughly 50 square miles, with a population that peaked decades ago and has been gradually declining since. The township’s character is forested and spread out, with civic life centered on a loose cluster of municipal buildings and schools along Carranza Road and New Road. There is no traditional downtown or walkable commercial corridor. The area is subject to Pinelands development regulations, which constrain large-scale growth. Housing values in the zip code are above the national median, and rents are moderate relative to the state benchmark.
Because Costello Prep is an alternative school within the juvenile justice system, the standard academic performance metrics that parents typically use to evaluate a school do not apply here. The school has no reported state assessment results, no graduation rate, and no chronic absenteeism data. This is not a gap in reporting; it is a reflection of the school’s purpose and population. Students in this setting are not part of the standard testing cohort, and the school does not produce a traditional four-year graduation rate. The comparison to other districts in Burlington County was not possible for proficiency, graduation, or attendance metrics because the data is not applicable to this school.
Enrollment data shows zero students reported across all served grades, which likely reflects the nature of the school’s population and how it is counted within the juvenile justice system rather than an absence of students. Demographic breakdowns, free-or-reduced-price lunch status, special education identification, and English learner data are all either reported as zero or missing. This is consistent with a school whose students are not part of the standard public school census.
For a parent or resident reading this, the key takeaway is straightforward. Costello Prep is not a school that families evaluate or choose. It serves a specific population within the juvenile justice system, and its operations are managed by the state’s Office of Education Juvenile Justice Commission. Standard measures of academic performance, graduation, and attendance do not apply in the way they do for a traditional public school. The school is located in a quiet, forested township with constrained development and a stable housing market, but that context is incidental to the school’s mission. Anyone seeking information about the school’s programs or student experience would need to contact the Office of Education Juvenile Justice Commission directly, as the available data does not describe the day-to-day academic or support environment.
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