State OKs Seaside Park-Lavallette Agreement, But What Does That Mean For Toms River Schools?

The Toms River Regional Board of Education discussed the state’s decision to allow Seaside Park to pursue a second send-receive arrangement with the Lavallette School District.

However, what that discussion entailed is uncertain, as it was part of the executive session agenda for Wednesday’s school board meeting at Toms River High School North.

Seaside Park’s Board of Education submitted a petition to state Commissioner of Education David Hespe in May, requesting permission to set up a second send-receive relationship with Lavallette, citing concerns about continuity of education. In late October, Hespe announced he had approved the petition, which the Toms River district did not oppose.

Seaside Park has been sending its elementary students to Toms River since it closed the borough’s elementary school in 2010. This year, 27 students are covered under that agreement, according to Seaside Park’s budget for the 2015-16 school year. Those students attend Washington Street Elementary School for kindergarten through fifth grade, and then Toms River Intermediate East for sixth grade.

After that, those students either attend Toms River on a tuition basis, go to Central Regional, a sevent- through 12th-grade district of which Seaside Park is an unwilling sending district, or parents have the option of sending them to private schools.

Several Seaside Park students already are attending Lavallette -- a K-8 school -- with their parents paying tuition for them to do so. Hespe’s approval means the school district will now pick up the tab for those students and any others who choose to attend Lavallette instead of Toms River’s schools.

The Seaside Park petition was approved by its school board on March 9. To make the March 9 vote possible, the Seaside Park board had to invoke the doctrine of necessity -- which gives a public body the power to act despite conflicts of interest. Four of its board members -- Charles Appleby, Gina Condos, Ronald Neal and Gary Yedman -- currently pay tuition for their children to attend Lavallette Elementary School. The fifth board member, Norma DeNoia, is an assistant principal at Toms River High School East.

The 2015-2016 budget approved by the Seaside Park school board estimates the district would be paying to send 36 students out of district, at a cost of $476,995, about $10,000 less than the amount it is paying this year, according to that tentative budget document. The total budgeted amount, including transportation, is $799,841, about $8,000 less than the current year’s budget.

According to Hespe’s written decision, the impact on Toms River’s schools -- both in terms of diversity and financially -- will be minimal, and that was part of the reason he approved the petition.

The new send-receive arrangement with Lavallette is expected to go into effect for the 2016-17 school year.

Hespe’s decision on the Lavallette arrangement, however, does nothing to remove the real thorn in Seaside Park residents’ side: the sending district relationship with Central Regional, where Seaside Park students attended middle school and high school for decades.

The relationship has been an uneasy one since 1985, when Seaside Park sought to withdraw from the district and send its students to Point Pleasant Beach. But it became especially bitter in 2003, when the fight over the equal valuation aspect of school funding really heated up. In August 2013 a state appellate court again refused to order the dissolution of the district.

Lavallette students go to Point Pleasant Beach High School for ninth through 12th grades, so Seaside Park students who attend Lavallette would have to go to Central Regional for high school, unless their parents chose to pay tuition for them to attend high school elsewhere.

From September 2009 until last fall, Seaside Park students had been attending Toms River schools for middle and high school. Initially those students did so at no cost to the parents, under an arrangement set up by former Superintendent Michael J. Ritacco.

The tuition-free arrangement ended at the start of the 2011-12 school year, but the Toms River district has wrangled both with Central Regional and with Seaside Park parents over who would pay the tuition. Central Regional refused, as its board never agreed to a send-receive arrangement between Toms River and Seaside Park. Toms River dropped its claim against Central in the fall of 2014.