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By TAPinto Neptune/Neptune City Staff
Published September 30, 2024 at 11:19 AM
OCEAN TOWNSHIP, NJ - Senate Education Chair Vin Gopal, D-Monmouth, wants the statelegislature to mandate that school districts consolidate where it would save property taxpayersmoney by eliminating unnecessary duplication of services and other assets.“We’ve seen the positive impact that eliminating duplication through regionalization andshared services can have on reining in property taxes, but relatively few districts have moved tomerge with their neighbors and costs remain too high,” Gopal said. “We just can’t afford tocontinue operating 600 individual school districts anymore.”While consolidating school districts and sharing services are not new ideas, they havebeen slow to catch on. Roughly $11.7 billion of the current $56.7 billion state budget is goingtoward school funding, the single largest pool of expenses in the state’s 2025 fiscal year. Wereally feel the impact on the local level. In 2022 nearly 53 percent of the more than $32.2 billionthat towns and counties collected in property taxes went to schools, according to the Departmentof Community Affairs.“It’s time to consider mandating school consolidation to reduce overall operating costsand shared services to reduce administrative costs as well as those for professional services, like attorneys and engineers,” Gopal said. “We can preserve the high quality public education NewJersey school districts offer and reduce the cost to taxpayers by consolidating school districts andthrough shared service agreements.”As Senate Education Committee chair, Gopal is tasking his colleagues in the statelegislature to take up a bipartisan examination of requiring school districts that can save byconsolidating to merge, or join shared service agreements with other districts to reduce costs.The state has tried to incentivize school districts to merge, especially those with fallingenrollment and rising costs. In 2022, New Jersey enacted a law that extended grants for districtsto study the feasibility of regionalization efforts. Few districts, most of them small, have movedto explore such mergers so far.“Any effort to mandate consolidation must include a lot of local input and the SenateEducation Committee will engage local educators, municipal governments and parents in theconversation,” Gopal said.Gopal expects the effort to mandate school consolidation will face some opposition inthis strong home rule state. He is committed to working with legislators on both sides of the aisleto draw a bill that continues and expands on New Jersey’s quality of education, supports teachersand professionals, but also addresses how school districts can reduce costs to property tax payersthrough consolidation and shared services.“But we have this conversation,” he said. “We hope to have a consolidation bill draftedby October or November, after we finish getting input later this month on reworking NewJersey’s school funding formula, which will be separate legislation.”
As enrollment continues to decline statewide, the cost of maintaining certain districts willbecome increasingly inefficient, if not unsustainable, the Education Committee chair said.“We also know that rising property taxes are forcing some residents, especially seniors,out of their lifelong homes and in some cases out of our state,” Gopal said.He pointed out that New Jersey is second only to Massachusetts when it comes toacademics and other important scholastic details, such as strong student-to-teacher ratios andanother study showed that more than 55 percent of New Jersey high schools beat the nationalaverage for SAT scores.“We will not compromise on the quality of the public education we provide to NewJersey children,” Gopal said. “We believe that we can maintain the highest standards ineducation and still address the cost. Consolidation and sharing services are the best approaches toaccomplishing academic excellence and affordability.“This is the start of a conversation that desperately needs to happen in New Jersey.”
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Senator Vin Gopal, a lifelong resident of Monmouth County elected in 2018, serves asSenate Majority Conference Leader and Chair of the Senate Education Committee.Assemblywoman Dr. Margie Donlon, a practicing physician, serves on the Assembly Health andthe Tourism, Gaming & the Arts Committees; Assemblywoman Luanne Peterpaul, Esq., serveson the Assembly Commerce, Economic Development & Agriculture and the Aging & HumanServices Committees. They represent residents of Allenhurst, Asbury Park, Bradley Beach, ColtsNeck, Deal, Eatontown, Fair Haven, Freehold Borough, Freehold Township, Interlaken, LochArbour, Long Branch, Neptune City, Neptune Township, Ocean Township, Red Bank, ShrewsburyBorough, Shrewsbury Township, and Tinton Falls in the State Senate and State Assembly.