BY SHERRY CONOHAN
Staff Writer
The Shore Regional High School Board of Education has reluctantly accepted the cut of $300,000 from its $11.65 million budget recommended by the four municipalities that send students to the school. The board has not accepted the advice of those municipalities on which line items to cut.
The board took the action at its May 27 meeting, during which several board members blasted the towns for imposing the reduction in the budget.
The money actually would come from the tax levy that voters have the opportunity to vote on, reducing it from $10,762,870 to $10,462,870.
The increase in the tax levy, before the cut, would have been $815,697.
Leonard G. Schnappauf, superintendent/principal, said that after talking with the councils of the four towns, the members of the board decided not to fight them on the cut.
"The board does not agree with the $300,000 cut. It feels that it will have a negative impact," Schnappauf said before the meeting. "But it has agreed to accept the cut."
The board could have appealed the recommended cut to the Monmouth County superintendent of education and the state education commissioner.
Schnappauf said the board will take the money out of the physical plant; transportation, both courtesy busing and after-school busing; athletics, probably eliminating one sport; extracurricular activities, which have not yet been defined ("it’s a dollar number"); and by reorganizing the guidance department.
There will, however, be no reduction in staff, he said.
There also will be no reduction in the number of administrators, he added.
"We have checked with other regional districts, and they have many more [administrators] than we do," Schnappauf said. "We have compared our administrative structure with other regional high schools, and Shore Regional is in line with everyone else."
Officials of the four municipalities — Oceanport and Sea Bright, whose voters defeated the Shore Regional budget, and West Long Branch and Monmouth Beach, where the voters narrowly passed it (by 44 votes in the former and 29 in the latter) — stressed that the cuts they recommended were in noninstructional areas and said they would not hurt the students.
They included reducing the number of administrators by one, from seven to six, for a savings of $89,722. The towns noted the budget cost for the seven positions in the budget for 2004-05 was approximately $733,000. They said the school, with 740 students, should be able to get along with six.
The towns specifically recommended to reallocate the duties of the four positions of assistant principal, vice principal, director of curriculum and instruction, and the supervisor of athletics, into three positions.
Oceanport Mayor Maria Gatta said her borough would have liked to have cut more than the $300,000, given the voters’ overwhelming rejection of Shore Regional’s budget in her town, but she was glad the four towns could agree on a figure.
Gatta said that sends a clear message to the Shore Regional board that the four towns will continue to look at its budget together instead of individually.
The $300,000 in cuts they recommended will not hurt the students, she stressed. She noted how Schnappauf had threatened to cut sports.
"It’s going to be their call where they cut," she said, "but this shows you don’t have to affect the sports program."
If the school does cut the sports program, she added, "I think the mayors will address that. The municipalities will question them on it if they go that route."
Gatta said she has asked Shore Regional to join the four municipalities in looking for cost savings in its budget now and in the future — "I want them to be part of the process" — and that the towns will be looking to their state legislators for help in dealing with the school costs/property tax issue.
"The most important thing was getting all four municipalities together," she said. "That was a milestone."
The only dissenting vote, when the four towns passed resolutions endorsing the $300,000 cut recommendation, came from Councilman William J. Boglioli of West Long Branch, who offered no explanation of his no vote.
The board members, speaking at their workshop meeting on May 25, charged the towns’ action was politically motivated.
"It seems the politicians want to destroy Shore Regional High School and they’re doing a good job of it," Paul Rolleri, an Oceanport representative said.
Rolleri maintained the voters’ low support for the budget in the school elections was not because of anything at Shore Regional but a strike at municipal and local school budgets.
"They are the problem in Oceanport, not Shore Regional High School," he maintained. "It’s a disgrace."
Rolleri also faulted Zambrano, the mayor of West Long Branch, where the high school is located, for not listening to Shore Regional, and complimented Boglioli for voting against the cut.
"I have to excuse Sea Bright," he added. "They get whacked every year."
Diane Merla, of West Long Branch, immediate past president of the board, said her hometown was really going to feel the cut in busing because so many residents live within one mile of Shore Regional.
"The tax rate in my town is going to be reduced [only] a little over a penny, and we’re going to take a hit," she said.
Anthony Moro, a representative from Monmouth Beach, said he was saddened by the attitude of his hometown. He said he had assumed that since the voters in Monmouth Beach had passed the budget, the borough would make a zero cut.
Moro attributed the borough commission’s support of the $300,000 cut to lobbying by Oceanport.
Ted Szczurek, an Oceanport representative and president of the board, worried that the condition of "our well-loved fields" could be affected by the cuts.
"It’s unfortunate to be dragged from what was worked so hard on all year into the political arena," he said.

