It was the only school district in New Jersey where students attended high school in New York, and the arrangement lasted for 85 years.
Now a plan to resume sending students from Montague to Port Jervis High School has collapsed, seven years after the rural K-8 district in New Jersey’s northwestern corner switched to High Point Regional High School in Wantage.
The Montague school board has rescinded a request to the New Jersey education commissioner, unanimously approved by the same board under different membership in October 2019, and will keep sending students to High Point.
It is the latest and perhaps final twist in a debate that has endured for decades in Montague, the only New Jersey municipality bordering both New York and Pennsylvania. Supporters of Port Jervis cited the promise of reduced costs and the incentive of qualifying for reduced, in-person college tuition rates in both New York and New Jersey, while advocates for High Point said they preferred keeping students in their home state.
Montague school board president Barbara Holstein joined four other board members — all five were seated in the past 16 months — in voting April 28 to withdraw from seeking a return to Port Jervis. Two others were opposed.
“This has been a long, long, long time coming,” said Holstein, who lost re-election in 2013 after joining the then-board majority in approving the switch to High Point.
She regained her seat in January.
High Point Regional opened in 1966, nearly three decades after Montague began sending students to Port Jervis. Of High Point’s 889 students, a total of 82 are from Montague.
High Point Regional High SchoolRob Jennings / NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
Voting to stick with High Point was not the only consequential decision at the April 28 meeting in Montague. The same five school board members approved placing Montague Superintendent Timothy Capone, hired on 2017, on paid leave — a decision that Holstein, citing employee privacy, declined to discuss.
Capone could not be reached for comment.
The five board members also voted to withdraw from a lawsuit, filed last fall, in which Montague accused High Point’s school board, superintendent and board attorney of trying to sabotage the Port Jervis application — a charge denied by High Point.
Montague agreed in November 2018 to pay more than $200,000 to High Point to resolve litigation over disputed special education tuition costs, but in return High Point agreed not to oppose any effort by Montague to send its students elsewhere.
In July, then-High Point school board president William Kehoe told the state education department that losing the $16,368-per-student tuition fees from Montague, in conjunction with decreasing state aid, could lead to fewer teaching jobs and classes at the school — among the details included by Montague in its now-withdrawn lawsuit.
One of the two dissenting school board members, Jennifer VanNess, quit the board at the end of last week’s meeting.
“I resigned in disgust and disappointment,” VanNess told NJ Advance Media, adding that her concerns with the board’s direction had been escalating for several months.
State education department spokesperson Michael Yaple said Friday that it had been notified of the reversal and that the matter is concluded. The department had agreed, not long after Holstein and a second supporter of High Point took office four months ago, to hold off on any decision.
The city of Port Jervis offers a contrast to Montague. It has more than twice as many residents, 8,595, but is less than 6% of Montague’s land size. Port Jervis is slightly more diverse, with white people making up 74% of the population, compared to 93% in Montague.
Montague is home to 3,681 and among the state’s most remote municipalities, covering more than 45 square miles but without a single traffic light. Until expanding the Montague Township School building several years ago, it sent students in 7th and 8th grades to Port Jervis Middle school.
Holstein acknowledged the longstanding ties between Montague and Port Jervis, stating, “Admittedly, our community is very tight with the city of Port Jervis.”
The relationship drew its first serious challenge in the 1990s, when a group of Montague residents filed a lawsuit arguing that the arrangement was in violation of the New Jersey Constitution. They claimed that the Montague students were subject to different standards than those in New Jersey, and that it amounted to taxation without representation because they did not get a vote in Port Jervis school matters. A judge ruled against them.
Holstein maintained that, in her view, High Point offers a better education. She said her 19-year-old daughter, now in the U.S. Marines, graduated from High Point in 2019.
“I believe that our children should be educated in New Jersey. I have always maintained that publicly, and I would continue to do so,” Holstein said at the meeting.
Montague school board member Glen Plotsky, the board’s president until four months ago, joined VanNess in voting against withdrawing the Port Jervis application.
The Montague Elementary School on Route 206, which enrolls students from kindergarten through eighth grade, in Montague, Feb. 15, 2020Rob Jennings / NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
Plotsky, at the meeting, said an agreement could have been reached giving parents an option.
“I understand many people in the audience, and otherwise, are interested in sending their children to High Point,” Plotsky said.
“The arrangement that we were attempting to negotiate would have been a send-receive with the Port Jervis city school district, but would have allowed for (children’s parent to choose) — or where the children themselves chose, with their parents’ consent — to attend schools in New Jersey,” Plotsky said.
“It was the opportunity to give them choice,” he added.
Holstein disagreed, arguing that specific placements in New Jersey districts would not have been guaranteed under the Port Jervis agreement.
“The High Point arrangement ensures every student in our district a guaranteed seat in their New Jersey state of residence,” Holstein said.
“If Port Jervis wanted to make an arrangement privately with people, that’s their business,” Holstein said.
Port Jervis school board president Deborah Lasch and the city’s schools superintendent, Michael Rydell, did not respond to requests for comment.
The current High Point school board president, Wayne Dunn, said Tuesday he is “encouraged about the potential of further solidifying” the relationship with Montague.
“For many years now, Montague students have enjoyed the benefits of attending High Point Regional High School and they have truly become an integral part of our school family. High Point remains open to discussing new avenues of cooperation with Montague and is very hopeful that the current boards of both districts will be able to move past former disagreements to jointly accomplish great things for our communities,” Dunn said.
Holstein said the next school board meeting in Montague will feature a discussion of the district’s future plans.
Please subscribe now and support the local journalism YOU rely on and trust.
Rob Jennings may be reached at rjennings@njadvancemedia.com.
The Link LonkMay 08, 2021 at 09:33PM
https://www.nj.com/education/2021/05/school-board-nixes-plans-to-send-kids-to-ny-high-school.html
School board nixes plans to send kids to N.Y. high school - NJ.com
https://news.google.com/search?q=Send&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
No comments:
Post a Comment