Study needs to be Updated
The Atlantic Highlands Borough Council unanimously approved financing one-third of the updated regionalization study requested by the Commissioner of Education, but only if they could have the final say on what professionals are doing the update.
Councilman Vito Colasurdo, who indicated several times he was not on council when the initial feasibility study was completed, made the motion, seconded by Councilman Jon Crowley that an update of the study be financed in part by council, but only if Atlantic Highlands has the “final say” on the firm doing the update.
Further, Colasurdo made it clear he would not approve of the Porzio group who did the initial study to do the update because “I don’t agree with the feasibility study” that it had completed.
The Porzio firm was unanimously hired last year by this borough council together with Sea Bright and Highlands, all of whom paid for it, to undergo a feasibility study on whether Sea Bright should be included in a school regional plan with Highlands and Atlantic Highlands.
The firm, the only one in the state that has successfully completed a regionalization program under current regulations, is widely respected as an expert in the field and contributed information and experience towards the current regionalization regulations across the state.
But at Thursday’s meeting, Colasurdo said because of his and others in disagreement with the Porzio report, “that’s why we got Kean to do a rebuttal.” That was a confusing statement in that if Colasurdo was using “we” as a member of the governing body, council did not authorize the Kean Report. That was a second feasibility study requested by the school boards of education. not this or any borough council and financed through a state grant. It was never indicated or identified as a “rebuttal” to any other study.
Both reports, regardless, came to a final assessment that Sea Bright should be included in a regionalization with Highlands and Atlantic Highlands and should be done as soon as possible in order to reap the financial benefits of adding a third community to pay educational costs with little impact on increasing school attendance into the district.
When Sea Bright and the boards of education in Highlands and Atlantic Highlands began negotiations for a tri-community K-12 regionalization, Oceanport and Shore Regional school districts, where Sea Bright students currently are educated, filed suit against the borough, charging it had no right to leave their districts. That lawsuit was dismissed and is currently under appeal in the court, in spite of the Commissioner of Education opinion she feels the new law is specific in giving Sea Bright the right, an opinion she supports, to seek a regionalized plan for its students.
Although this Council has retained a special attorney, Matthew Giacobbe, to represent it on the question of school regionalization, that attorney was not requested to attend or apparently have any input into the two executive sessions Council has held before making the determination to underwrite one-third of the update, providing it can approve the firm doing the Porzio firm’s original study.
