Washington Township Committee has asked the state to close the Greenbank Elementary School and send its students to Mullica. Grades 6-8 should be coming to Mullica Middle School, along with two teachers starting next year.
The issue is state tenure laws. If the municipal Board of Education were to do that on its own authority, Mullica also would have to take all Green Bank's teachers - something that Mullica likely could not afford. Brenda Harring-Marro, the superintendent for both districts, said taking teachers from Washington Township would likely require laying off Mullica teachers with less seniority because the district cannot afford to employ all of them.
To read full article in the Press of Atlantic City, click link.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Washington Twp. Committee asks state to close school and send its students to Mullica
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5 comments:
If the Green Bank BOE had closed the school by itself, it would have had to find another school system other than Mullica to take their students because Mullica's BOE did not want to be stuck paying the higher teacher costs.
Will some knowledgeable person please explain how bringing in 66 children to our school system will benefit Mullica's tax payers.
Do we have extra empty classrooms for the transferred teachers? Will we have to add an addition to our school in the future? Will the class sizes grow too large for our already overworked teachers to handle?
Will Washington Twp. send money to Mullica for ALL the additional expenditures? The State is cutting money to schools,we have no guarantee that they will fund the extra expense.
Mullica would not lose money IF the state agrees to the closing. Mullica would be covered by sending district tuition. Talk to the Superintendent.
Mullica's schools currently have the physical space for more students. That was the argument that several elected township and school board officials used for selling off township land to build more houses - to help fill the school! Try to guess who proposed this foolish idea.
In the past if school districts were consolidated the cost of running the new school district was apportioned to the towns in accordance with either the percentage of students enrolled or based on the percentage of equalized valuation. In the case of a complete merger there would be no tuition involved as the two districts would become one. Washington Township would have one (or more) seats on the board of education and their board would be phased out. If interested in further information please see the letter regarding a recent merger at: http://www.state.nj.us/education/counties/Non-ops/PembertonBorough.pdf
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