By Stephen Appezzato
HIGHLANDS – A Highlands official has sued the Atlantic Highlands, Highlands and Henry Hudson Regional school boards, alleging they violated the Open Public Meetings Act, preventing the public from having a say about an important regionalization-related decision.
Council president Jo-Anne Olszewski filed a complaint in Monmouth County Superior Court last month to void a resolution approved at a May 28 joint special meeting of school districts that greenlit “the concept of settlement” in a dispute involving Shore Regional, Oceanport and Sea Bright schools. According to Olszewski, the public was kept in the dark on the matter.
“The boards of education have done everything they can to keep the public from being clear. They didn’t explain to the public what they were doing at the May meetings,” Olzewski’s attorney, Vito Gagliari Jr., who serves as special counsel for educational matters for the Sea Bright and Highlands boroughs, said.
“I know what active, involved school boards look like and run like, and I am so disappointed here,” said Olszewski, a teacher of 26 years and council liaison to the Highlands Board of Education.
Legal Troubles
The resolution pertains to litigation brought against Sea Bright by the Oceanport and Shore Regional school districts almost two years ago. At the time, Sea Bright, which does not have a school and currently sends its students to the two districts, was included in a petition to the state commissioner of education requesting to regionalize with Atlantic Highlands and Highlands in the Henry Hudson district.
The Tri-District’s 2022 regionalization study recommended Sea Bright be included as soon as it could withdraw from Oceanport and Shore Regional to increase tax savings for Highlands and Atlantic Highlands.
But just before the petition was filed, Oceanport and Shore Regional challenged Sea Bright’s authority to withdraw from their school districts.
The education commissioner disregarded this challenge, but Shore Regional and Oceanport appealed the decision. In the appeal, the Highlands, Atlantic Highlands and Henry Hudson Regional school boards are cited as co-respondents; they filed to leave the appeal.
Meanwhile, worried the appeal could affect their regionalization chances, Highlands and Atlantic Highlands filed an amended regionalization request without Sea Bright to continue the process.
Holding Out Hope For Sea Bright
In a referendum last year, Atlantic Highlands and Highlands voters approved the move to Henry Hudson.
“People thought that that was step one,” Olszewski said. “That’s what they’d been told – this is going to happen, and in step two, Sea Bright comes in.”
According to Gagliardi, “side discussions” among the school boards for Highlands, Atlantic Highlands and Henry Hudson, which were in communication with attorneys from Shore Regional and Oceanport school districts, led to the May 28 resolution that approved the idea of a settlement to remove the three boards as co-respondents in the appeal.
While an actual settlement was not reached with the Shore Regional and Oceanport school boards at that meeting, one was eventually approved at school board meetings from June 10 to June 12.
In that settlement, Gagliardi said, the three school boards agreed to “set up circumstances to make it clear that Sea Bright will never be permitted to join” the regionalization in return for Oceanport and Shore Regional dropping the case against them.
“They exchanged getting dropped from a lawsuit – which wasn’t seeking relief against them anyway – for an agreement never to let the voters vote on the Sea Bright option, even though they had promised those very same voters they’d have that option,” Gagliardi said.
He also noted that, by chance, on the day of Olszewski’s injunction hearing, the appellate court ruled to allow Highlands and Atlantic Highlands to leave Oceanport and Shore Regional’s appeal.
“They wouldn’t have had to trade anything for it, much less what they actually traded,” the attorney said.
In the transcript of the case’s oral arguments from June 24, Gagliardi said the settlement was structured so that the school boards that regionalized would not work with Sea Bright until it left Oceanport and Shore Regional. However, as Gagliardi argued, case law and similar proceedings indicate Sea Bright would need another district, like Henry Hudson Regional, to sign on before it can leave its current district.
“It is absolutely impossible, as the law is structured, for that (Sea Bright joining Henry Hudson Regional) to ever come to a vote,” Gagliardi said in his argument.
“When they say we’ll consider Sea Bright after you get out, but we’re not going to be involved in any petition before then, what they’re saying is we will never consider Sea Bright,” he argued.
‘Never-Ending Litigation’
Ultimately, Judge Gregory Acquaviva denied Olszewski’s request for an injunction.
In his analysis, Acquaviva said Olszewski’s case had many “qualifiers” and “presumptions,” and that the school boards’ actions did not create the “irreparable harm” needed to warrant an injunction.
Based on the complaint, The judge did not initially find that the three school boards violated the Open Public Meetings Act.
“Case law indicates that for a plaintiff aggrieved under the Open Public Meetings Act to demonstrate inadequate notice in this context, that plaintiff must demonstrate that any omission was intentional and was designed to deceive the public,” Acquaviva explained.
Citing precedents, the judge could not conclude this was the case.
In a statement, Jonathan Busch, attorney for the Henry Hudson, Atlantic Highlands and Highlands school boards, described the lawsuit as “the latest attempt in a series by the Boroughs of Highlands and Sea Bright to hold the Tri-Districts – and their stakeholders– hostage in never-ending litigation, to the financial detriment of our taxpayers and for the benefit of Sea Bright.”
“Thankfully, Judge Gregory L. Acquaviva ultimately determined that Ms. Olszewski’s application for emergent relief was speculative and not rooted in substantive facts or law,” Busch said.
“While the Tri-Districts will continue to be responsible stewards of the public’s trust and resources, it is apparent that the Boroughs of Highlands and Sea Bright have every intention of increasing the pace and volume of litigation on their taxpayer-funded gambit,” he added.
Although Olszewski did not get her injunction, she said the case is not over yet.
“We have an opportunity to take discovery and get some documentation about what went on here,” Gagliardi said. “I don’t know that the public is clear on what went on here.”
As the regionalization stands without Sea Bright, Olszewski said, Highlands will see no cost-saving benefit since it has fewer students entering the new district than Atlantic Highlands.
“I want the people of Highlands and Atlantic Highlands to have a say, to have a footnote,” Olszewski said. “I want things to be out in the open. I want the taxpayers to know.”
As of June 30 the Highlands and Atlantic Highlands school boards no longer exist. At this time there is a Henry Hudson transitional school board with its members’ terms expiring Dec. 31.
The article originally appeared in the July 4 – July 10, 2024 print edition of The Two River Times.
