School Districts With
Officials but No Schools?
New Jersey Has Them
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Brian Branch Price for The New York Times
James E. Hall, 88 years old, is a school board member
in tiny Teterboro, N.J., which sends its 10 students to neighboring
districts but remains officially separate. “We’re doing well
the way we are,” he said of the divided system. |
By WINNIE HU, NYTimes
on the Web, November 15, 2006
TETERBORO, N.J., Nov. 12 — The
tiny borough here elects three school board members to keep records and divvy up
its $261,887 budget. Yet Teterboro has no schools and only 10 students,
who are sent to neighboring districts.
“I was going to go back to school to help boost the population,” said James E.
Hall, 88, one of the school board members, who also happens to be the borough’s
tax assessor and secretary of the Board of Health.
If New Jersey’s 615 school districts seem a lot for a small state (New York has
697 and Connecticut 169), nowhere is that more evident than in Teterboro and the
22 other “nonoperating districts.” Essentially, they exist in name only,
yet have staffs to schedule board meetings, record the minutes and collect tax
dollars to pay tuition and transportation costs for their students.
But with four legislative committees in New Jersey poised to release plans on
Wednesday aimed at easing the state’s property tax burden — two of them
examining changes in the school financing formula and consolidation of services
— a growing number of lawmakers and educators are calling for the elimination of
these districts without schools. Although they serve only 2,172 children,
a tiny fraction of the state’s 1.4 million students, they cost local taxpayers a
total of more than $800,000 a year in administrative expenses, including
salaries and office supplies.
And any serious plan to try to control property taxes in New Jersey — which at
an average $6,000 annually are the highest in the nation — must focus on the
state’s schools, since public education accounts for about a third of the state
budget and two-thirds of the property taxes collected.
For now, one notion of consolidating all 615 districts into 21 countywide
systems seems unlikely, though lawmakers say they are continuing to examine ways
to change the financing formula and perhaps foster the streamlining of the
districts.
“It just shows how crazy our patchwork quilt of school districts is,” said State
Senator Bob Smith, a Democrat from Middlesex County, referring to the sheer
number of districts. “If you sat down to develop the most inefficient and
wasteful education system, you couldn’t do any better.”
These districts with bureaucracies but relatively few students range from the
wealthy seaside resort of Mantoloking, where residents live in lavish houses
looking out at the ocean, to a tiny enclave in South Jersey where employees of
the famed Pine Valley golf course live. Each has a school board that is
required to hold regular meetings — even in years when there are no students —
leading some members to question the existence of their own districts.
“It’s kind of weird,” said Barbara Christian, a board member in Pine Valley,
which has five students living in the district, three of whom attend parochial
schools. “Once in a while we have to sign some papers, but we really don’t
meet.”
Still, many residents in these districts want to remain separate so they can
have some say in how their children are educated and preserve the distinct
identity of their communities.
In many cases, the arrangement also keeps their property taxes low because the
school district does not incur such costs of operating schools as building
maintenance and teacher salaries.
In Mantoloking, for instance, the Borough Council adopted a resolution in August
to oppose consolidation of its five-student district. The Mantoloking
students attend Point Pleasant Beach schools, at a cost of $10,500 a student,
and an additional $11,000 for busing for them. Mantoloking is not,
however, officially joined with the Point Pleasant school district.
“We have a very excellent deal going on, and we’ve had it for 50 years,” said
William K. Dunbar, the mayor of Mantoloking. “We don’t want to join with
any other town because our costs would go skyrocketing.”
The latest push to focus on districts without schools reflects the larger
struggle to streamline New Jersey’s sprawling public school system, which is
often viewed as an outgrowth of the state’s past penchant for subdividing
government. Indeed, its 566 municipalities once inspired a former Assembly
speaker, Alan J. Karcher, to write a book in 1999 titled “New Jersey’s Multiple
Municipal Madness.”
As recently as 2004, Gov. James E. McGreevey said he would rid the state of
nonoperating school districts that “oversee nothing but their own existence.”
But he backed down after the districts protested and neighboring schools
objected to taking on additional administrative responsibilities.
“It was symbolic of all of the problems connected to changing these kinds of
relationships,” said William L. Librera, the education commissioner at that
time. “If you can’t even consolidate nonoperating school districts, which
exist just for clerical reasons, how are you ever going to bring larger places
together?”
But Frank Belluscio, a spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association,
said that smaller districts, including those without schools, would be more
willing to join together for such educational benefits as more elective courses,
if there were not financial obstacles. For instance, Mr. Belluscio said
that any savings realized by eliminating some administrative positions would
probably be offset by the increased costs of a larger school system.
In cases where districts have merged to create regional school systems,
financing has been a contentious issue because affluent communities often pay
far more in property taxes than neighboring towns in the same school system.
The Beach Haven school district contends that it pays an average of $38,210 for
each of its 90 students to attend Southern Regional High School in Ocean County,
while Stafford Township paid $3,649 for each of its 2,000 students to go to the
same school.
“It’s just absurd,” said Deb Whitcraft, a longtime Beach Haven resident and
former mayor. “It’s not just unfair, but we also have no say in how the
money is spent. People are furious all over the island.”
Senator John H. Adler, a Democrat from Camden County, said on Tuesday that one
proposal under consideration would give wealthier districts an incentive to
merge with poorer counterparts by eliminating what some see as a penalty.
As it is, he said, “wealthier districts merging would get hit with a tax spike,
so they just wouldn’t do it.”
But while few will openly admit it, some residents in well-off school districts
whose children attend local schools also balk at the idea of sending their
children to school with those from poor families.
“The quality of the school is supposed to have to do with the quality of the
education delivered,” said William Firestone, a professor of education policy at
Rutgers. “But in fact, real or perceived, a lot of it has to do with the
neighborhoods and the kids who go there.”
In Teterboro, whose land consists mostly of Teterboro Airport and which has a
total of only 45 residents, school district records are stored in a single
filing cabinet in the municipal building across Route 46 from the airport.
Mr. Hall, the school board member, keeps track of the district’s annual budget
in an old-fashioned ledger. It is filled with cross-outs because a single
family moving in, or out, changes the entire school budget, such as it is.
While Mr. Hall said there would certainly be advantages to joining another
school district, he remained divided over whether the borough should do so.
“We’re doing well the way we are,” he said. “I like it because it’s
working.”
Richard G. Jones contributed reporting.
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