By Chris Rotolo
HIGHLANDS – Political leaders and legal counsel from neighboring boroughs traded counterpoints and contrasting opinions during a special meeting regarding the potential regionalization of students from three local municipalities.
The April 6 meeting of the Highlands Borough Council was meant to clarify the municipality’s stance in the infancy of a regionalization process that could help create a new K-12 school district composed of students from Atlantic Highlands, Highlands and Sea Bright.
But the meeting turned contentious when Atlantic Highlands Borough Council member Jon Crowley questioned the motives and claims of the host officials. Crowley expressed his “disappointment” in the Highlands council for holding its meeting before the release of a feasibility study being conducted by the Henry Hudson Regional Tri-District, the district composed of Henry Hudson Regional High School, Atlantic Highlands Elementary School and Highlands Elementary School.
That study runs parallel to a joint feasibility study funded by the three boroughs, for which survey data was recently released.
“I’m disappointed in this body. Your state senator (Declan O’Scanlon) asked you to take a breath and stand down. This (meeting) shouldn’t be happening tonight. This meeting should be happening after the school district releases its report in May. You should be presenting both sides of the argument,” said Crowley, who described the borough-funded study as “slanted” toward the interests of Sea Bright.
“The report being discussed tonight was conducted by a group that works for Sea Bright. Yes, Atlantic Highlands and Highlands chipped in, but it was initiated by Sea Bright. We know who the client is,” Crowley said.
Highlands Mayor Carolyn Broullon refuted Crowley’s claim that the governing body should yield to the wishes of a state official, and described his comments as counterproductive.
“Three boards of education and three councils, in the narrative of our senator, are being asked to work collaboratively to educate our residents,” Broullon responded. “To be adversarial at this point, when we are trying to educate the public on the process, is completely uncouth.”
In his opening remarks, Highlands special counsel Vito Gagliardi, of the firm Porzio, Bromberg and Newman, discussed a tax savings to borough residents should voters from each municipality choose to form a new district, but Crowley balked at the notion.
“Where are the guaranteed savings in this study? There are no guaranteed savings, and anyone who says anything different, they’re factually incorrect. I’d like to ask the public, when is the last time there was a proposed savings and everything added up? It’s not going to happen,” Crowley said.
Gagliardi countered by outlining Sea Bright’s current school tax burden. According to counsel, for the 2021-22 academic year, Sea Bright tax payers shouldered a levy of approximately $3.2 million to send about 60 students to the Shore Regional High School District.
The levy is the result of a school funding formula implemented in 1975 that has cost Sea Bright millions in tax dollars to educate a minimal number of students since a 2009 directive from the New Jersey Department of Education declared the town’s board of education as “non-active,” forcing it to dissolve.
“Virtually all the tax savings Atlantic Highlands and Highlands would enjoy come out of Sea Bright’s participation, and it’s because the three school districts in Atlantic Highlands and Highlands already do a wonderful job sharing services,” Gagliardi said. “But without Sea Bright, the savings wouldn’t be there. Educational benefits? No doubt. But not economic benefits.”
Gagliardi explained that, while Sea Bright stands to see the most economic benefit from a new regional school district, the borough would share approximately $1 million of the savings it realized from leaving Shore Regional with its new partners.
“How that money is allocated is up to the three communities to decide, and it will need to be decided before a question is submitted to the county clerk for inclusion on a ballot,” Gagliardi said.
In 2019, the three boroughs adopted complimentary resolutions to fund a joint feasibility study that would investigate the formation of a new regional district. That study was recently completed and, though 73 percent of overall survey respondents favored the formation of a new district, that number dropped to 59 percent for those surveyed from Atlantic Highlands.
Former Sea Bright Borough Council member Charlie Rooney stepped to the microphone to ask about his town’s recourse should Atlantic Highlands choose not be part of the newly formed regional K-12 district.
“If we got to a point where the voters of Highlands and Sea Bright chose to do this, but Atlantic Highlands voted it down, there are protections in the law that don’t allow any one community veto power of what others can do,” Gagliardi said. “Highlands and Sea Bright could form a K-12 district, and in that case Atlantic Highlands would run a K-6 district and pay to have their high school students attend (Henry Hudson Regional High School) on a send-and-receive basis. Atlantic Highlands would also not enjoy the benefit of that tax money coming from Sea Bright.”
The results of the Tri-District feasibility study are expected to be presented in May.
This article originally appeared in the April 14 to 20, 2022, print edition of The Two River Times.
