Just read the great article in the Atlantic Highlands Herald written by the three Democrat members of the borough council, Jon Crowley, Lori Hohenleitner and Brian Dougherty.
Sorry I cannot include it in VeniVidiScripto as well since they did not send it to me to publish.
However, it is a great read, and gave a great description of events on regionalization up until this time, hinted at whether Sea Bright would be included now or later, and strangely enough, did not think the Borough Council should have a meeting to explain the Porzio report they paid for, like the other two towns did.
Their reason is because they…the three council members, found the Porzio report moot, in spite of that group being the only one in the state to plan a successful regionalization plan elsewhere. And in spite of the borough paying for the study and not holding a workshop so all the people of the borough could make their own decision.
It all reminded me of an article from the Red Bank Register back in 1988, at about this same time of year. That article was written by Kenny Trainor, another terrific reporter with whom I covered dozens of council meetings in many towns. We worked alongside Mark Magyar, another very intelligent and thoughtful reporter who is now Director of the Sweeney Center for Public Policy and an ace on state government and state news.
Mark had left the Register when Kenny drafted this story, and was reporting for the Hackensack Record, before moving on to be state house reporter and an editor for the Asbury Park Press, a position he held for a few years in the early 1990s before going on to edit the NJ Spotlight and be a campaign strategist, lecturer, and many other wonderful things prior to his present position.
He’s been vitally important in this regionalization question for the Bayshore towns and certainly knows his stuff.
But back to Kenny’s story… He wrote about a meeting of the Henry Hudson, Atlantic Highlands and Highlands school boards to discuss “the pros and cons of combining their school districts.” It was 1988, 34 years ago.
Then Schools Superintendent Milt Hughes told the board there were some problems with how the district was situated then, saying, “first off, you have multiple bodies making policy decisions instead of a single body.” He listed all the duplication , lack of flexibility in organization, and some other disadvantages of their school boards, three districts. He advised the boards to “take a good hard look” at the aspects and devise a sample budget based on combining the costs of all three.
Frank Teeple of Highlands was the school board chairman at Henry Hudson then, and told each of the boards to “go back and think about whether you want to go ahead with a study.” … 34 years ago.
The board said they would and would make a decision about whether they would conduct a study by the next tri-board meeting.
There aren’t any newspaper accounts in 1988 or 1989 on whatever that decision was.
Nor was Hudson the only school district grappling with the question. Rumson Fair Haven is similar, and they were opposed to combining their elementary schools in the regional district, in spite of the additional cost of having more school boards.
Throughout the state, actually, in many parts of the nation, numerous school districts goaded by taxpayers complaining about the high cost and waste in the education field, were discussing the same thing. But little was done.
We’re now 34 years later. Thursday night there is a resolution on the Atlantic Highlands council table calling for sending the idea of K-12 regionalization to the Commissioner of Education, a necessary step in order to let the people vote.
That’s a positive thing. Let’s hope the resolution is passed. Unanimously. And let’s further hope the questions that will now come up get resolved, answered, and enable the folks to see a question on regionalization on the November ballot so they can decide what cost education. Let’s hope it’s done in time for November, without incurring extra costs for a special election next year.
