By Stephen Appezzato
SEA BRIGHT – A significant court decision recently affirmed Sea Bright’s right to seek withdrawal from the Oceanport and Shore Regional school districts and pursue regionalization with the newly formed Henry Hudson Regional School District.
In November, the appellate division of the New Jersey Superior Court sided with the Borough of Sea Bright, ending a roughly two-year standoff between the borough and the Oceanport and Shore Regional school districts.
Originally, the borough sought approval from the state education commissioner to withdraw from the Oceanport and Shore Regional school districts and pursue regionalization with the Atlantic Highlands, Highlands and Henry Hudson school districts. However, as Sea Bright does not technically have a board of education, the Oceanport and Shore Regional school districts challenged the borough’s petition, arguing that as a borough, Sea Bright did not have the proper legal standing to pursue regionalization.
“Our response to that was, well, the statute specifically refers to governing bodies municipal and educational. And if Sea Bright can’t proceed, it would leave Sea Bright in this awkward position where the state is encouraging regionalization for everybody, but if you don’t have your own board of education, you’re sort of left out. And there’s no way the legislature intended that,” said Vito Gagliardi Jr., a principal at Porzio, Bromberg & Newman, P.C., who represented Sea Bright in the lawsuit.
Gagliardi said the state education commissioner initially agreed with this argument, but an appeal from the Oceanport and Shore Regional school districts pushed the matter to the Appellate Division, which had never ruled on such a matter. While the case was hung up in court, the Atlantic Highlands and Highlands school boards pursued regionalization without Sea Bright. On Nov. 26 the court ruled in Sea Bright’s favor.
“Now there’s no question that the Borough of Sea Bright can pursue regionalization with the Henry Hudson Regional District,” Gagliardi said.
With the ruling, Gagliardi hopes Sea Bright’s regionalization question will appear on the November 2025 ballot, giving voters a say on whether to move forward or remain with the Oceanport and Shore Regional school districts.
“The issue here is democracy pure and simple,” Gagliardi said. “The plan is to let the voters decide how and where your kids are educated, how much you want to spend in taxes. So the fight is not to regionalize, the fight is to get it on the ballot and let the citizens decide if they want to regionalize,” he said.
Those in favor of regionalizing point to the potential cost savings taxpayers in Highlands, Atlantic Highlands and Sea Bright could see if the borough joins the Henry Hudson Regional School District. When each borough initially investigated the benefits, multiple regionalization studies were conducted.
“The conclusion reached in all three studies was the same, which was, given the size of the student body at Henry Hudson, it would benefit from adding the Sea Bright children and, given the proposed tax levy that the mayors of the three towns negotiated and their municipal governments ratified, you have a scenario where Sea Bright is going to contribute a million dollars a year to the tax base for Henry Hudson. So that means that, collectively, the taxpayers of Highlands and Atlantic Highlands will see a million dollars of savings a year,” Gagliardi said.
Gagliardi added all three experts hired by the districts agreed that there are educational and financial benefits from Sea Bright joining Henry Hudson, and “now, Sea Bright has the standing to pursue that relationship and that’s what it intends to do.”
The article originally appeared in the December 19 – December 25, 2024 print edition of The Two River Times.
