Boro seeks answers on SRHS obligation
Role of income may skewer town’s duty
to fund district
By sherry conohan
Staff Writer

‘Show me." That’s the request from Mayor Gregory W. Harquail to state and county education officials, in whose hands lies next year’s budget for Shore Regional High School.

Harquail wants to know the components of the regional school formula that has Sea Bright paying $44,500 for each of its 31 students at Shore Regional High School in West Long Branch, and whether the income element he has been told is in there is skewering the borough’s bill since its ZIP code (07760) is the same as Rumson and the Locust section of Middletown.

The Borough Council has recommended the defeated $11.1 million budget of Shore Regional High School be cut by $1.3 million, and is now waiting and watching for what State Commissioner of Education William Librera will do when he finally strikes the tax levy for the school district.

The voters in Sea Bright and West Long Branch turned thumbs down on the proposed tax levy needed to support the Shore Regional budget, but the other two sending districts — Oceanport and Monmouth Beach — passed it.

West Long Branch, the other town to defeat the budget, recommended trimming only $50,000 from the high school’s budget for 2003-2004.

Monmouth County Superintendent of Schools Michael Maddaluna, a participant in the top-level negotiations to strike a final figure, observed that those two recommended cuts by the towns that defeated the budget, being $1,250,000 apart, were "pretty disparate."

Shore Regional is one of only three school districts in the state — along with the Freehold Regional school district, also in Monmouth County, and the Penns Grove-Carneys Point school district in Salem County — which reached the "failure to agree" stage after the school budget was defeated, thereby booting the final decision on the tax levy to the state commissioner.

Maddaluna said he and the business administrator from the Monmouth County Superintendent of Schools office met with representatives of the Division of Finance from the state Department of Education on June 11 to review Shore Regional’s budget and make preliminary recommendations.

He said the same participants were to meet again today (June 20) to review and finalize their recommendations and send them on to Librera to determine the levy to strike.

Librera is expected to make the final decision on the budget on June 25, he added.

"Basically, what’s looked at is the entire budget," Maddaluna said of the first two meetings, in which he was involved. "We take into consideration the taxpayers and the needs of the students."

Maddaluna said the formula for assessing each sending district’s share of a regional school’s budget has changed several times since the state switched from a per-pupil basis in the mid-1970s, with the most recent change occurring in 1996. He said he thought one of the problems with Sea Bright is that property values, a major component of the formula, have escalated greatly there. But the income of many residents has not kept pace with that, he said.

"You have people who aren’t mil­lionaires," he remarked.

Harquail said Katie Atwood, director of the state Department of Education’s fiscal policy and planning office, has told him there’s an income component in the regional school formula.

As a result of the shared zip code, the mayor said, the borough has had problems relating to information pulled from the census because it is being lumped, for income purposes, with Rumson and the Locust section of Rum­son. He wondered if the DOE had done the same, thereby getting an incorrect income level for borough residents.

Harquail said one of several requests he made in a letter to the state Depart­ment of Education was to look into the possibility the average income in the borough was being falsely inflated.

The mayor also asked for the oppor­tunity to sit down with the decision makers during their discussions and plead the borough’s case, but was turned down in a letter from Richard Rosen­berg, the deputy commissioner of educa­tion in charge of the Division of Fi­nance.

Harquail said he asked state school officials to explain how the funding for­mula was devised, what the parameters are for Sea Bright, and whether it can be changed for next year.

Harquail said he also wanted to find out exactly what, in Shore Regional’s budget, falls under the constitutionally mandated "thorough and efficient" edu­cation umbrella and what’s "outside the box." He noted the borough hired a pro­fessional — a school business adminis­trator — who came up with $1.3 million outside of T&E that could be subject to a cut, but with the potential for more.

"Katie Atwood … told me there was the possibility that there was $3 million outside the box," he said. "We’ve been looking for the other $1.7 million outside of the box."

The mayor also noted that Shore Re­gional High School is located on a very large piece of property and said he asked the Department of Education to possibly order the school board to sell off the excess land and keep only what’s necessary for the school’s operation.

He said that would accomplish sev­eral things: Revenue from the sale could be used to supplement the high school’s budget for three to four years while a change in the funding formula is sought. It would reduce the cost of maintenance. Also, it would return the property to the tax rolls of West Long Branch and give that town more ratables, which in turn would increase its percentage of the funding formula it would be responsible for footing.

Harquail praised Maddaluna "for working very hard" to help resolve Sea Bright’s issues.

"He’s trying to find an amicable way to help all of us," the mayor said.

Harquail noted that Rosenberg, in his letter denying the borough the meeting it sought to participate in the process of going over the budget and determining the tax levy, had said he was referring his other questions to the director of school funding who would provide re­sponses to the county superintendent of schools "shortly."

"Shortly," he said, noting the com­missioner will strike the tax levy June 25, "is not soon enough."

Harquail said, knowing there would be a "failure to agree" on the Shore Re­gional budget, that he and a borough council delegation made an appoint­ment with Maddaluna and state officials before reaching that point and met with them in Trenton "so Sea Bright is not dragging its feet."

"I’m pleading with them," he said of the decision makers. "It’s crunch time now. We’ve got to be in that crunch be­cause Sea Bright has a lot of issues to resolve."