By Chris Rotolo
ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS – After unanimously adopting a resolution during its Feb. 9 meeting, the governing body is poised to develop the missing piece of a school regionalization petition that requires a mutually beneficial formula to divide and allocate annual tax savings.
Following an executive session with the borough’s special regionalization attorney Matthew Giacobbe, who was absent from the public portion of the meeting, the Atlantic Highlands Borough Council agreed to move forward with mediation measures that would include representatives of the neighboring boroughs of Highlands and Sea Bright.
Borough council attorney Marguerite M. Schaffer made it clear that the governing body is committed to hashing out a formula that would allow for New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan to issue a decision on a petition submitted in July to create a comprehensive pre-kindergarten to grade 12 regionalized school district.
However, if the petition receives department of education approval, Schaffer said it is still unclear whether or not regionalization efforts will immediately include Sea Bright students. The ambiguity stems from pending litigation between Sea Bright and the borough’s current receiving districts of Shore Regional High School and Oceanport.
According to Schaffer, to ensure that the regionalization petition can proceed to the commissioner’s desk, mediators will develop two allocation formulas, one that includes an immediate scenario with Sea Bright, and another limited to students from Atlantic Highlands and Highlands.
“Our resolution will fix the problem, whatever that problem is,” Schaffer said, referring to the litigation currently before the NJ-DOE’s Department of Controversies and Disputes (Docket #157622). “The mediation will involve the development of an allocation formula that assumes Sea Bright is involved, as well as a formula without Sea Bright,” she said.
“This is about streamlining the process so any encumbrance that may impede Sea Bright’s immediate involvement will not stand in the way of regionalization.”
A joint feasibility study on regionalization funded by the three boroughs and published in December 2021 stated that a regionalization effort that included Sea Bright would provide the most significant savings to local taxpayers. That conclusion was seconded by an adjacent feasibility study conducted by Kean University, which was funded by a state grant awarded to the Henry Hudson Regional Tri-District.
“If weighing the two options side-by-side, option one being consolidating the Tri-District into an all-purpose PK-12 regional district without Sea Bright and option two consolidating with Sea Bright, it is clear that option two will produce the greatest near-term and long-term savings to the largest number of communities,” the Kean University study states. If the regionalization venture were to include the approximately 60 students from Sea Bright, the transition would inject between $2.5 and $3 million into the collective tax levy pool. These are monies that would otherwise remain with the Shore Regional and Oceanport school districts, a point emphasized by Atlantic Highlands Board of Education member Alison Jacobs.
Jacobs also brought the realities of the local school boards into focus, illustrating the fact that in order to consider the accommodation of Sea Bright students, the boards first needed to create those accommodations.
“In regard to Sea Bright, we want to include them. We want to educate those students. We value them. And regardless of any encumbrances they may be experiencing, if Sea Bright were to be a free agent, as it stands right now, we wouldn’t be able to offer them a home to come to because we are not a pre-K to 12 district,” Jacobs said.
Currently the Atlantic Highlands and Highlands districts offer kindergarten through sixth grade services, while Henry Hudson Regional High School serves grades seven through 12.
“Right now we have to focus on taking three districts and regionalizing them into one. We have to take three boards of education, with 25 people, and take it down to nine people. In order for Sea Bright to come with us now or at some point in the future, the onus is on us to prepare a home for all of us to live in,” Jacobs added.
According to Schaffer, the council’s intention is to have a question put before voters in the fall. If the decision is to host a special school board election in September, the question regarding regionalization must be submitted to Monmouth County Clerk’s Election Division by July 28. If the parties decide to put the question on the November general election ballot, it must be submitted by Aug. 29.
The article originally appeared in the February 16 – 22, 2023 print edition of The Two River Times.
