Wait! an appeal may be in the cards! The attorneys stall and make money at the same time.
Whether there will ever be a regionalization of two or three towns, whether the taxpayers will ever be given a few million dollars for education from Sea Bright taxpayers, and whether Henry Hudson Regional school will remain a 7-12 school until forced into a regionalization at some time in the future are all still unknowns.
What is known and made clear…attorneys are making a lot of money in the process of stalling and preventing the public from having their own say in how they want their kids educated.
I’ve heard that at the 11th hour, Cinco de Mayo, Friday, May 5, the Oceanport and Shore Regional Boards of Education appealed the decision the Commissioner had made more than a month before. That means they have re-instituted yet another legal action against a petition the state Commissioner of Education has not yet seen!
The refiling of their appeal could well mean that Atlantic Highlands Borough Council and the board of education will once again delay any decisions on whether the regionalization question can be on the November ballot so voters can decide what they want for their education dollars.
The petition originally filed by Oceanport and Shore Regional charged that Sea Bright, with no school or board of education of its own, has no right to disassociate itself from the Oceanport and Shore regional boards of education and create the possibility of joining a new tri-district K-12 with Highlands and Atlantic Highlands. Sea Bright had first initiated a new regionalization proposal when state law was unanimously approved several years ago specifically to enable regional and local schools to expand as a tax savings measure and improved education possibilities.
But the petition unanimously approved by the Highlands, Atlantic Highlands, Henry Hudson boards of education and the governing bodies of all three towns had not yet been filed with the Commissioner of Education when the Oceanport and Shore Regional boards appealed it. Therefore, without knowing what the petition was, the Commissioner could not take any action on a petition she had not yet received, so she rejected it.
She still has not yet received the petition. But that did not stop Shore Regional and Oceanport from appealing that decision at the 11th hour. It would then seem logical that the Commissioner, once again, has no alternative but to once again deny an appeal of a petition she has not yet seen.
All of which spells more delay, more attorney involvement, and more tax dollars spent on delays and appeals of something that is not there.
Nor are the costs incurred simply by Highlands, Atlantic Highlands and Sea Bright. Since Oceanport and Shore Regional are regional districts, taxpayers in Monmouth Beach, West Long Branch, Oceanport and Sea Bright are also paying for all the attorneys involved in delaying tactics that thwarts the voters in their attempt to express their own opinion on what happens with their own tax dollars. And costs them tens of thousands of dollars they can never recoup in the process.
