MONROE: Monroe BOE sues J’burg

By Amy Batista, Special Writer
   MONROE — The Board of Education filed a lawsuit this week against the Jamesburg Board of Education, seeking back payments of more than $562,000 in debt service interest for its high school students, officials announced Wednesday night.
   ”I just wanted to share with the board that we did officially file the lawsuit today against Jamesburg regarding the interest upon the debt service that we have been debating for the last year and a half,” Superintendent Dr. Kenneth Hamilton said during Wednesday night’s board meeting.
   According to the petition of appeal in the Monroe Township Board of Education vs. Jamesburg School District Board of Education, the Monroe BOE “requests the Commissioner of Education to consider a controversy which has arisen” between the two.
   The Jamesburg BOE has been anticipating legal action regarding the debt-service.
   ”We expected the legal action and this is the route this issue must go,” said Jamesburg Board President Sal Brucato in an email on Jan. 16. “The Jamesburg board feels that this is the only way the state will get involved. A few of us spent the afternoon at the County Superintendents office who assured us they have no control over the Monroe debt service. Therefore this is solely between the two boards and inevitably the Commissioner of Education will need to get involved. The legal action may act as a catalyst for that to happen.”
   According to the petition, in April 1979, the New Jersey State Board of Education ordered the closing of Jamesburg High School and further determined that Jamesburg pupils from grades 9-12 be designated “as tuition pupils for indeterminable period effective July 1, 1979 at Monroe Township High School”.
   The borough currently sends around 225 students to the high school and did try to house the students in another town’s school prior to this year.
   Jamesburg accrued tuition arrearages to Monroe in the amounts of $212,047.13 for the 2007-2008, and $349,731.12 for the 2008-2009 school year, according to the petition.
   During the 2010-2011 school year, representatives of both sides spoke with, and met with, the Executive Superintendent and the Executive Business Administrator for Middlesex County in an attempt to resolve the dispute between them regarding Jamesburg’s pupil tuition rate for the 2011-2012 school year.
   In 2003, Monroe’s board approved a $67.9 million bond for the construction of the new high school. In 2008, it approved another $41.9 million bond to pay for additional construction costs.
   In March 2011, the parties entered into an Agreement in which Monroe agreed to reduce its estimated per pupil tuition rate for each pupil Jamesburg sent for the 2011-2012 school year in exchange for Jamesburg agreeing to pay Monroe the actual tuition costs for the 2011-2012 school year as certified by the New Jersey Department of Education.
   According to the petition, bond related interest costs resulting from the construction of the high school, which began to accrue during the 2011-2012 school year, become due and owing to Monroe in the 2013-2014 school year.
   Monroe agreed to fully pay this bond related interest cost during the construction phase of the high school from the 2004-2005 school year through 2010-2011 rather than require Jamesburg to pay its proportionate share.
   ”Our platform is, and will be, that we are taking care of our K-8 (grades) in order to ensure they are getting the quality of education their counterparts in Monroe’s elementary schools are getting,” Mr. Brucato said. “While we understand Monroe’s boards platform, we believe they are missing the point that we cannot afford this and they have a vested interest in allowing us to fully educate our K-8 in order to better prepare them for high school. One of our board members calls this ‘common sense’ and I certainly concur in that analysis.”
   Mr. Brucato compared the size of Monroe’s budget to Jamesburg and the impact this has at the moment and tried to put it into “perspective.”
   ”The debt service of $600,000 is less than one percent of Monroe’s budget and approximately five percent of ours,” Mr. Brucato said. “This gives the impact (of our payment) some perspective.”
   According to the petition, should Jamesburg’s board refuse to budget and pay Monroe during the next school year, the estimated per pupil tuition costs and its proportionate share of the bond related interest costs, Jamesburg would be in breach of its obligations under the sending-receiving statues and regulations in the March 2011 agreement.
   The petition claims that another referendum may need to be submitted to the taxpayers of Monroe Township in order to pay for the cost of expanding the high school due to over crowding, but if the parties’ sending-receiving relationship was terminated, such an expansion would not be necessary.