Sea Bright Seems to Be Going From the 2 Step to the 0 Step

The possibility of the promised Second Step for a vote to include Sea Bright and its approximate $2 million into the newly formed Henry Hudson regional School district sounded even more distant than ever heard at the regular and budget meeting of the regionalization board Monday evening.

It appears that Sea Bright joining the newly formed school district any time soon is a sinking ship.

At the meeting,  board attorney Jonathan Busch made it clear that, in addition to his statements last month that he doubted the question of Sea Bright would be on the ballot in November, by state law it must be on a November rather than school or special election  ballot to be decided at all. That would indicate in all probability the Sea Bright question could not be presented to the voters to decide until November of 2025. Inclusion of Sea Bright, if approved, would then not begin until 2026 at the earliest.

Busch did not indicate whether this was added information he had recently received, or that he simply did not include it last month when asked about a possible date for a vote by the three boroughs.

The new Pk-12 Board of Education unanimously approved its first budget for the new regionalized district, absent the $400,000 savings that had been previously touted should the three schools in Highlands and Atlantic Highlands form a single district.

Only a handful of local residents were present to hear district business administrator Janet Sherlock give a thorough and detailed explanation of the $24,146,688 budget which is to be financed in part by $18,567,411 in taxes split between the two towns. The budget is approximately $500,000 higher than last year’s figures for the three schools.

The total budget is offset by several grants and funding from the district’s reserve account, which is $89,175 higher than last year. An additional approximate $31,000 comes from Union Beach as tuition from the ten students from that district who attend the Hudson district among other sources.

The approved figures represent a decrease of one cent for Atlantic Highlands taxpayers because of increased property values in that borough, and a decrease of 13 cents for Highlands taxpayers for the same reason. Th equalized property value in Atlantic Highlands is $1,178,354,088 and in Highlands, $1,016,423,398, or 54 per cent for Atlantic Highlands and 46 per cent for Highlands.

Sherlock highlighted both capital and maintenance projects planned from reserves, including air conditioning and brick work at both Atlantic Highlands and Henry Hudson schools, and windows at the Highlands school. Maintenance projects for Henry Hudson include repairing flooring on offices and updating locker rooms, flooring and cameras in Highlands, and entrance framing and new doors in Atlantic Highlands.

Sherlock said 31 students in grades 9 through 12 opted out of Henry Hudson for one of the six Monmouth County Vocational Schools but did not have figures at the meeting of how many were from each town, or what percentage that represents of the overall high school population.

Attorney fees are not included in the budget, nor could board members give any estimate of the total that was paid in the past year for the new district.

In response to questions from Mark Fisher on the promised immediate $400,000 savings not evident, Administrator Tara Beams noted that since the regionalization law is so new, “there are a lot of unknowns but added that in the future “you’ll see more.” She pointed out that with regionalization there will be one less business administrator and one less bookkeeper than currently employed.

No one responded to Tracy Abby’s recommendation that if forming the regionalization has been as difficult and time consuming as Beams and Busch have indicated, including roadblocks they said they have had with the Department of Transportation and Social Security in addition to the Department of Education, it would make economic sense to retain a professional consultant to work through all the roadblocks.

Fisher asked the board to keep in mind that the Education Commissioner, in light of the fact the regionalization issue has been a focus for at last four years, that “we need to fix it.” He asked what it would take to make regionalization with another town work, and asked the board  if there were things it could do to move forward to resolve what they have indicated  are “lots of legal pieces.”

Fisher also asked if the board could consider bringing information to the next meeting on what this board could do in order to get the Sea Bright regionalization question moving once the Shore Regional and Oceanport challenges to Sea Bright’s inclusion in the new district are resolved, namely a vote to see if the electorate in the three towns want to include Sea Bright. “That would be awesome,” he said.