New Jersey towns including Margate, Ventnor and Brigantine are facing potential school district merger or elimination. The chickens have come home to roost, and NJ State Senator Steve Sweeney is leading the charge.
NJ State Senator Sweeney’s Path to Progress plan. It’s a doozy. Much needed tough love.
Sweeney: “The goal is to eliminate the administration, put a principal in the school, get rid of the school district, leave a principal, let the regional high school become a K-12 district,” he said. “You go from 600 districts to 320.”
NJ State Senator Sweeney recommendations include:
- Merge all New Jersey school districts into K-12 regional districts.
- Improve quality of education and promote efficiency.
- Establish two countywide school district pilot programs.
- Municipalities with less than 5,000 residents: merge with adjacent municipalities.
- Reduce health benefits from top of the line ‘platinum plans’ to very good ‘gold plans’.
- Reduce top heavy, redundant school administration
- Consider countywide or regional tax assessment to ensure consistency and efficiency.
On the other hand, NJ Gov Phil Murphy wants to raise taxes. Especially for those who make too much money….or those who run a business…etc.
Shaking our head when watching local leadership discuss critical need to protect status quo. Save your breathe, homies. This fight is happening at the top in Trenton. Not down here in Marvelous Margate or Brigantine.
Can’t play the home-rule privilege card anymore?
Sweeney’s school consolidation plan could provide the state an additional $1 billion.
Some local NJ school districts that could be consolidated, merged or eliminated:
- Brigantine
- Linwood
- Margate
- Somers Point
- Ventnor
See the full list here:
NJ School District Consolidation
“The governor continues to peddle expensive programs that sound nice but carry massive price tags that the state has no ability to pay for”
Pensions are killing the state. People can’t afford to stay in New Jersey.
Former NJ Resident
Pensions are killing the state and that’s what makes people not able to afford to live here?? You mean from the thousands of people that paid their money from their paychecks for years?? Or it’s the rediculous amount of taxes this state imposes from its residents and keeps adding to that list every month (ie. the rain tax, the gas tax, etc.) that makes people move out of this state every day?! And not able to afford it!
Its about time these school become consolidated. The current system of home rule has given some New Jersey towns the ability to foster a climate of nepotism and top heavy well paid administration that has reamed the pockets taxpayers and elderly citizens. Some of these shore town like Margate with low student populations and few schools have multiple administrators all of whom earn over 100k a year. Their teachers make more than double the average pay of teachers in other school districts and yet the students test scores are below average of those in other school districts. In Margate, better paid teachers do not mean a better bang for the buck!
Finally, finally, finally getting closer to Margate schools elimination, or, at worst case, merger!!! The few privileged/nepotistic Margate residents money train will come to an end.
M. Phillips, it’s unbelievable that your hoping for the elimination of Margate Schools.
What do you and your husband think that the elimination of schools in Margate will do
to that already over-inflated price your asking for your house? Morons………..
Sweeney’s plan is a hackjob that takes money out of the pockets of NJ workers and gives it to corporate interests. It dumps responsibilities Counties without a drop of funding. Sweeney should be ashamed of himself.
I don’t usually agree with Sweeney, but he is spot on. The only objectors are the unions and higher income people who want Home Rule and don’t want to merge with what they consider a lesser district.
If I may. Maybe it’s time to run the school systems effectively. Take the best teachers from the different districts, take the best schools based on amenities and condition, then merge them all. This will give the children their best chances to have a great education, cut costs and actually increase property values, while not increasing taxes. And everyone can get over their egos. Just a thought.
I grew up in Ventnor (and still have family there and visit often) but now live in a small town in northeast Connecticut, where I serve on the school board. We’re seeing similar pressure to regionalize, but at least up here, the savings are all imaginary. All of the low-hanging fruit from regionalization is already being done with cost savers like food service, special ed, fuel costs, and insurance done through a regional consortium and kids attending a regional high school. Administrative costs here are low (we have a part-time superintendent who retired from a much larger district) and every line in the budget is combed first by our board, then by the board of finance, then by the town itself, which has to vote on it. Regionalization would mean much higher transportation costs and building costs (unless you want to shift kids between buildings every year), and much less control by individual taxpayers. In Connecticut it’s driven by urban districts who feel that saving money in small towns will free up more money to help them deal with their own issues, but the savings don’t really exist here, and I suspect they don’t exist down the shore either.