SCHOOL REGIONALIZATION CONSENSUS

New Jersey residents pay one of the highest property taxes in the nation in order to fund public school education. The taxpayers are ready to revolt. The State Legislature feels that by reducing the number of school districts via regionalization, property taxes could be reduced.

The State League of Women Voters asked the local Leagues if it should update its policy on school regionalization. The existing policy dates back to 1980 and was amended in 1993. It was time to take a consensus update to see if there should be additional changes which would allow the League to lobby on the organization of regional districts and the financing of regional districts, two topics not covered in the existing policy.

At the March meeting, we examined what regionalization looked like in New Jersey. There are more than 600 school districts in New Jersey, 16 of which are k-12 regional districts, 52 are K-6. K-8 or 9-12 limited purpose regional districts, 8 are consolidated districts (SouthOrange-Maplewood) and 216 are sending/receiving districts (Berkeley Heights receives Mountainside students at its high school.) 23 districts are non-operating school districts. The remainder are local districts representing one municipality (Summit Public Schools). Our consensus showed we supported the merger of non-operating districts and sending/ receiving districts into a regional district. We also supported that all existing limited purpose (K-6, K-8, 9-12) regional districts be merged to create all purpose (K-12) regional districts.

The Educational impact of regionalization was examined. We supported the regionalization of districts to eliminate districts smaller than 500 students. We reached no consensus on the regionalization to improve socioeconomic or racial balance. We felt that diversity is a plus but busing issues were a problem. We vehemently opposed the formation of county wide school districts. We weren't sure if there should be a maximum size for a school district and what that size should be. We did feel there would be a richer curriculum and a broader range of services in a larger school district.

We reached no consensus on questions dealing with incentives for regionalization (historically these have not worked in the past) and rules concerning the funding of regional school districts. We felt we didn't have enough information. It is not clear how much if any savings would occur from regionalization. When Berkeley Heights was part of a regional district we had the highest per pupil costs in the county. The per pupil cost in Berkeley Heights is lower today (13 years later) than it was the last year of the regional district.

We felt that the Department of Education and the Voters should initiate the consideration of regionalization, but that only the Voters should make the final decision to regionalize.

The one issue we felt the strongest about was that we (the League) could not take a position on any aspect of the regionalization issue that would take away local voters' rights.