Mendham, Chester Schools Could Merge Under New Consolidation Plan

NEW JERSEY — The Senate Education Committee unanimously approved legislation on Tuesday to help start the process of creating K-12 regional and countywide school districts in an effort to improve educational quality and efficiency and on the list of targets were the school districts in Mendham, Chester and Long Valley.

The bipartisan bill, sponsored by Senate President Steve Sweeney and Sens. Vin Gopal and Declan O'Scanlon, would help create enhanced learning opportunities "that come from attending a K-12 or countywide district," said Sweeney. Consolidation will be voluntary, he said.

"This will be the first major overhaul of New Jersey's school regionalization statute in over 25 years," said Sweeney. "It is designed to improve the quality of education by ensuring coordination of curriculum from K to 12, provide the enriched educational experience that smaller districts cannot offer, and generate long-term savings that can be used to hold down property taxes or reinvest in expanded educational programs."

Regionalization is particularly important for small districts with declining enrollments that are having an increasingly hard time "providing a quality educational experience and making their budgets work," Sweeney said.

Locally, there are many forms a consolidation like this could take. The simplest, if such a plan even exists, is for the schools districts in Mendham Township, Mendham Borough, Chester Consolidated and Washington Township be combined into the a K-12 with the West Morris Regional School District, where their teens go for high school.

Current West Morris Regional School Board President Robert Stroebel noted that he had not yet read the bill.

"If I have any comment, it will only come after I read it and consider its implications, which could be quite complex, impacting each town differently," he said.

But a folding of all those districts into one, and the administrative and board of education consolidation they could entail is far from the only option.

The current West Morris Regional School District could be split into a pair of K-12 ditricts, with Mendham and Chester schools becoming part of a West Morris Mendham District and the Washington Township School District becoming part of a West Morris Central School District. Chester could also be rolled in with Washington Township in a Central District depending on enrollment.

Ignoring a K-12 change could work as well under the new plan. The Mendham districts could unite and form a consolidated one like Chester already has between their two towns. In Mendham Township at least, the idea was not dismissed offhand.

"The focus of Mendham Township School District is on successfully delivering student achievement for 'Every Student, Every Day' while being fiscally responsible to our taxpayers," Mendham Township Board of Education President Gretchen Holquist told Patch. "I look forward to seeing how this continues to evolve through the state legislature and to better understanding the specific implications for Mendham Township."

Mendham Borough Board of Education President Beth Cocuzza did not return messages for comment.

Chester Consolidated School President Mike Tomasco shared a statement of behalf of the school board.

"The Chester Board of Education is open to all ideas that the State suggests that may benefit the children and taxpayers of our district. We look forward to further developments as presented by the State providing options to school districts to allow them to consider consolidation, if that is in line with the goals of their communities." the statement read.

Washington Township School Board President Jessica DeCicco did not return messages for comment.

The new legislation provides for an expedited preliminary approval process to enable districts that are losing state aid to readjust their 2021-2022 school budgets to factor in the increased funding they would receive for participating in regionalization studies.

Many districts have been seeing an ongoing reduction in aid under S2, the law that enforced cuts in so-called adjustment aid to districts that have been deemed to not be paying their local fair share of property taxes.

Sweeney said he has long fought for shared services as an effective means of making government more efficient and providing taxpayer savings.

"K-12 regionalization, countywide school district pilots and shared services programs are a cornerstone of our Path to Progress plan to promote efficiency and lower property taxes," Sweeney has said.

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