Henry Hudson to Become Middletown East?

That meeting of the Mayors and school board chairman to discuss including Sea Bright in the Henry Hudson regional school district will hopefully result in getting the question on the ballot in Atlantic Highlands in November. Middletown East

Highlands and Sea Bright have already said they want it, and the Atlantic Highlands Mayor and council members have been saying for a long time they’re in favor of it.

But they (Atlantic Highlands Mayor and council members) haven’t done anything to move it forward. They were not even willing to have a non-binding question on the ballot to understand the residents’ desires. Instead, they are rather simply waiting to see exactly how many more appellate court decisions Shore Regional is going to spend money to fight before they take a stand on their own.

Things are happening in the Bayshore that should make these folks wake up and act quickly.

What’s happening in Middletown these days should make these mayors and board scared silly they might not even have their own district one day….and it could happen sooner than they think.

Or is it possible some people really want the Henry Hudson Regional school district to be dissolved so soon after it’s been formed so it can help solve Middletown’s problems?

Could it be possible that all three towns, Sea Bright included, could be become part of a giant Middletown School system?

Could that be the answer to solving everybody’s financial problems?

Does anyone see that what could happen to Highlands, Atlantic Highlands, or both, is the same thing that started all of Sea Bright’s problems half a century ago?

They closed the grammar school in Sea Bright in the 1970s, and the borough became a district without a school. They had no choice but to have their kids go to Oceanport, where they have little if anything to say about how the kids are being taught.

Read Middletown’s problems. They want to close Navesink, ironically the school with the highest academic values and ratings of any of the primary grades school in town, indeed even highly ranked across the state. They want to close the Leonardo School, saying all those kids should now be bused to other buildings, other locations, other teachers, and lose so much of the neighborly friendliness they know and love.

Let’s just take the Navesink school. That’s a k through five school. The Middletown Board of Education wants to close it because it’s too expensive to keep educating the 208 students that go there.

Look at Atlantic Highlands. That’s PK through 6 school where 245 students are being educated. Highlands is a Pk through 6 school as well; they have a student population of 170. Both schools average less in a classroom than the Navesink School they want to shut down a couple of miles away.

So how long do you think it’s going to take the state, the Middletown school district, or all those financial wizards wondering how Middletown got into so much debt in secret in the first place to think about expanding one district to resolve the problems of many?

Supposing the Henry Hudson regional district, with or without Sea Bright, came into the Middletown School district. That would bring in millions of dollars to Middletown, helping them resolve their financial problems. It would also bring in youngsters for the two schools Middletown is thinking of closing, filling the classrooms better, making it worthwhile to keep teachers on the job there and keeping an awful lot of parents happy?

Is that what Atlantic Highlands wants? In the end, after all the stalling, all the talk about waiting until Shore Regional gets its answers, all the failures to put it on the ballot for the people to decide, could it be that the Atlantic Highlands Mayor or mayor and council would really like their schools to become part of Middletown?

Isn’t it time to step up to the plate and let the people know what the ultimate goal really is?

Isn’t it long overdue to simply put the regionalization question on the ballot in Atlantic Highlands like the other two towns did: Isn’t it time to let the people let the elected officials know what they want? You’ve been fiddling with the question for years, time’s a wasting.

The real question is, why is the Atlantic Highlands Mayor and Council ignoring the solution staring them in the face , a solution that has been validated by feasibility study after study, studies that make it clear including Sea Bright into Henry Hudson is best for the students and taxpayers?

This is a solution that enables the local board to preside over what could be the ultimate closure of their very own school system. The promised “Step 2” to include Sea Bright would also go a long way in gaining State and Education Commission support to recognize and praise Henry Hudson as a truly regionalized school. It is a solution which would most likely protect the Henry Hudson system from consolidation into Middletown for years to come.

With decreasing younger population throughout the state creating statewide problems for the cost of education, there may come the time when it is not the local voter who will make the education decisions; it could well be the state that mandates specific numbers in classes in order to get state funding.

Sea Bright felt the pain half a century ago. Can’t we all learn from that before it happens again?

Middletown East Middletown East Middletown East

Middletown East Middletown East Middletown East