Should GEHR be K-12?-Superintendent Weighs in on district realignment

Published August 12, 2009 in Shore News Today, By STEVE PRISAMENT, Staff Writer

HAMILTON TOWNSHIP – The superintendent of the Greater Egg Harbor Regional High School District has reservations about Atlantic County redistricting plans that would eliminate the current grouping in favor of individual K-12 districts for Oakcrest, Absegami and Cedar Creek high schools.

Adam Pfeffer in an interview Friday, July 31 said it appears at this time that Absecon elementary school graduates could be accommodated at the district’s new Cedar Creek High School in Egg Harbor City.

“The key to that is ‘at this time.’ The school hasn’t opened yet and right now population projections would work,” Pfeffer said in an interview at his office in district headquarters adjoining Oakcrest High School here.

He was responding to four county feasibility studies – the first of which offers three options for the Greater Egg Harbor region. Two of the three include the addition of Absecon, which is currently aligned with Pleasantville High School.

“We have not analyzed Absecon in terms of Absegami,” he said. “That was an add-on from the original discussions at Vo-Tech a few months ago.”

Pfeffer said he thinks the county should study organizing the existing regional high school district into a K-12 district that would include the kindergarten to eighth-grade students in its current constituent districts of Galloway Township, Hamilton Township, Mullica Township and Egg Harbor City, and its sending districts of Port Republic and Washington Township (Burlington County).

“I’m not looking at a large regional district,” he said. “I just think it should be one of the considerations.”

The New Jersey Department of Education has indicated a preference for establishing K-12 districts, he said.

“I think that was the intention of these preliminary studies,” Pfeffer said.

He said the configuration of the consolidation proposals was not designed by the high school district.

Atlantic County Executive Superintendent Thomas Dowd told the Atlantic County Board of Chosen Freeholders Tuesday, July 14 of his recommendations for feasibility studies on regionalizing area school districts.

Dowd is developing a district regionalization and consolidation advisory committee, he said, and investigating where to consolidate, share services, eliminate and create regional school districts where it is efficient and practical.

Making Greater Egg Harbor a K-12 district would create a district too large and cumbersome, he said.

Pfeffer said such a district wouldn’t be a lot larger than the proposed consolidation of Atlantic City with Brigantine, Ventnor, Margate and Longport. Greater Egg Harbor, he said, would be around 11,000 students compared to around 8,000 students in the Atlantic City district.

“It’s not just a matter of size,” Dowd said. “It’s a matter of efficiency.”

Dowd also said that a lot of preliminary work went into the proposals.

“While these are my suggestions which go to the state Department of Education,” Dowd said Monday, Aug. 10, “they are actually the result of numerous studies and input from many of the people involved.”

The public will have the final say on regionalization and consolidation, Pfeffer noted.

“Each district will vote on the final proposal affecting it,” he said. “If one district votes ‘no,’ the plan is rejected.”

Merging Absecon into Greater Egg would create an entirely new district, Pfeffer said.

“It is fraught with all kinds of questions and problems,” said the superintendent. “There’s a lot of ‘don’t know’ involved.”

Pfeffer said the real issue is finances.

“These things are easily done if they’re tax neutral,” he said. “But they seldom are. The apportionment of cost to the towns involved creates big, big issues.”

There’s debt, existing debt, the value of the towns and dozens of other items to consider, Pfeffer said.

“Egg Harbor City is an A district,” he said. “Galloway and Hamilton townships are CDs. They have different tax bases.”

Changing conditions and forecasts of what’s to come are also factors.

“The growth is not continuing,” Pfeffer said, explaining why he could accommodate Absecon students at the new building in Egg Harbor City.

“The new high school is not based on invalid enrollment projections,” Pfeffer said. “The projections by the Center for Regional and Business Research utilized on funding and running the project were extremely accurate. The school district was overcrowded by 500 students.”

In the last year a new projection was made, he said.

“I suppose, due to the economy, those projections do not indicate growth within the district, but a decline in enrollment over the next five years,” Pfeffer said. “The decline does not reduce the need for the new high school. Since the decline is projected for Galloway Township, I will be recommending the removal of the temporary trailers, which will lower the capacity of Absegami by 225 students.”

According to the superintendent, the trailers are owned by the district, and they are obsolete. There would be a savings on maintenance and energy costs.

“The high school was needed and is still needed,” Pfeffer said. “By assigning students by towns and by providing magnet programs for the region, students then will level out the building population in the end.”