If the state permits a public vote on regionalization, voters would be asked to answer two special questions
By Ruth Luse, Managing Editor
On Monday night, Lambertville City Council, Stockton Borough Council and West Amwell Township Committee adopted resolutions that request permission to hold a referendum “to dissolve the current school districts (four) and create a pre-kindergarten through grade 12 district.”
”These actions are viewed as the necessary next steps towards bringing the referendum to vote,” said Dan Seiter, chairman of the South Hunterdon County School District Regionalization Committee.
Mr. Seiter said the resolutions confirm the governing bodies’ intentions “to join a petition to the commissioner of education, seeking the commissioner to approve a referendum to be brought to voters to dissolve the current regional high school and form of a regional K-12.”
Three local school boards also have OK’d similar resolutions — Lambertville Public School’s board and West Amwell Elementary’s board last week, and Stockton Borough School’s board on Monday.
Mr. Seiter explained recently that “these are petitions from the districts to exit from the regional school. South Hunterdon Regional High School’s board “does not enter into the petition, as it is the regional school from which the (other three) districts are requesting to exit. SHRHS will be expected to respond to the petition once it is filed with the commissioner.” At that time, he said, “ I would expect a positive endorsement from the board (SHRHS).”
ACCORDING TO STOCKTON Clerk Michele Hovan, “the Stockton governing body did not take a position for or against the proposal,” but its members do support a referendum that will ask the voters to decide.
In that sense, Stockton’s resolution differs from Lambertville’s.
— The Lambertville resolution says, in part, that, after due consideration, the mayor and council members have “determined that the students (in the four existing districts) can receive a thorough and efficient education if South Hunterdon is dissolved and a new, cost-effective PK-12 regional district is formed.”
Mayor and council “has determined that there exists good cause to pursue a referendum on the dissolution of South Hunterdon and the subsequent formation of a new PK-12 regional district so as to provide the voters with the ability to decide how their tax dollars are spent and how their children are educated.”
Mayor and council, therefore, seeks “to have a referendum on the dissolution of South Hunterdon contingent on the adoption of a second referendum authorizing the creation of a new PK-12 regional school district that will replace the four school districts currently serving the communities of Stockton, Lambertville, and West Amwell.”
Council has retained and has authorized City Attorney Phillip J. Faherty III, of Hunt and Faherty, “to prepare and submit a petition to the commissioner of education seeking authorization to hold a referendum on the issue of the dissolution of South Hunterdon and subsequent formation of a new PK-12 regional school district” and authorizes Mr. Faherty “to take reasonable and appropriate action to obtain the aforementioned required authorization from the commissioner of education and implement same.”
Mayor David Del Vecchio said Monday: “We think its appropriate that the petition to form a regional district go forward, so the voters will have the actual say and make the final decision,” the mayor said Tuesday. “Giving the voters the final decision is the way to go.”
— According to West Amwell Township Clerk Lora Olsen, the Township Committee’s resolution is similar to Lambertville’s. Complete details were not available.
A RECENT RELEASE from Mr. Seiter provides the history of the quest for regionalization:
On May 16, Hunterdon County Interim Superintendent of Schools Jeffrey R. Scott sent a three-page memo to New Jersey’s acting commissioner of education, Christopher D. Cerf, in which Mr. Scott recommended that the South County regionalization proposal move to the state for a formal review.
If the state Department of Education agrees that regionalization could provide educational and/or financial benefits to the Lambertville, Stockton, and West Amwell communities, the state would schedule a public vote on the matter.
”We are pleased to learn that the county superintendent has reviewed and approved our regionalization proposal,” said Mr. Seiter. “Specifically, the county superintendent endorsed a plan in which Lambertville, Stockton and West Amwell elementary schools, along with South Hunterdon Regional High School, would be combined into a single regional district serving students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. This was the model called ‘scenario one’ in the feasibility study. Our consultants felt that it would provide the greatest educational and financial benefit to our communities.”
Local school and municipal officials have been exploring regionalization for several years. In February, a state-required feasibility study that examined the educational and financial benefits and disadvantages of unifying the four local districts was presented at a public meeting.
After reviewing the study, which was prepared by the Princeton consulting firm Porzio Bromberg & Newman, the municipal governments and elementary school boards in Lambertville, Stockton, and West Amwell each petitioned the county commissioner asking his office to examine the feasibility study.
Under state law, the county superintendent of education must provide his review — known as an “advisability report” — before regionalization of school districts could proceed.
In the advisability report, Mr. Scott wrote, “I have thoroughly examined the feasibility study report, attended the public forum where the consultants presented its findings and recommendations, had numerous conversations with the regionalization committee’s chairperson and have conferred with the superintendents of the four school districts. I agree with the regionalization committee’s recommendation that ‘scenario one’ would best fit the educational needs of the students in the South County Region and would best fit the financial needs of the three municipalities.”
In the report to the state DOE, Mr. Scott also addressed two suggestions regarding the use of facilities in the new district. These included the possibility of moving sixth grade students from Lambertville, West Amwell, and Stockton schools to create a sixth through eighth grade middle school at the South Hunterdon building; and the option of busing Stockton students in kindergarten through fifth grades to Lambertville Elementary School and repurposing the Stockton School building as a pre-kindergarten or early learning center. The Porzio firm’s educational expert, Dr. Lloyd Leschuck, had proposed these potential suggestions in his section of the feasibility study.
”Each of these proposals carries with it the potential for increased transportation costs,” noted Mr. Scott. “I suggest that, should all three municipalities vote to approve the formation of the preK-12 all-purpose regional district, the newly formed board of education should thoroughly investigate these suggestions before any changes are made.”
Mr. Seiter agreed with the county superintendent’s suggestion. “It’s important to understand that Dr. Leschuck made these suggestions simply to show that a regional district would have greater flexibility in the way it uses facilities and resources than our four separate districts currently do,” he explained. “His examples were not meant to be part of the regionalization plan. Our plan was that each of the schools would continue to operate as it had in the past, and that we would gain efficiencies through consolidating administrative costs that are currently duplicated across multiple districts.
”Voting for regionalization does not mean that one or both of these suggestions will happen,” Mr. Seiter continued. “The regionalization committee believes there should be a moratorium on any major changes until after a thorough strategic plan for the regional district has been created. This will be a major undertaking, and will involve members of the community, as well as teachers and educational experts, who will develop a plan for what education will look like in southern Hunterdon County in the future. But local voters will have to decide that it makes sense to create a regional preK-12 district before that strategic planning process can begin.”
The release of the county superintendent’s advisability report completes the third of five steps in the regionalization process. The next step will be for one or more of the local boards of education to ask the state commissioner of education to place the matter on the ballot.
If the state permits a public vote on regionalization, voters would be asked to answer two special questions:
— The first would authorize the dissolution of the existing South Hunterdon Regional High School.
— The second question would authorize the creation of a new regional preK-12 district. The new district would not be created unless majorities of the voters in all three communities vote “yes” to both questions.
The two ballot questions will be linked, so that if the first question passes but the second question does not, the first question would be invalidated and the four school districts would continue to operate as before.
Information about the five steps to regionalization, as well as the full text of Mr. Scott’s May 16 advisability report and the Porzio Bromberg & Newman feasibility report, have been posted on a website created by the South Hunterdon County School District Regionalization Committee. The website address is http://www.southcountyregionalization.com.