Op-Ed: Mandatory Consolidation Will Save Taxpayers Money and Improve Education

By Vin Gopal

New Jersey has over 600 school districts. More than 200 of them have less than 500 students. Many of them have buildings less than 30 percent full. Some of them have dramatically increased administrative costs, hiring more and more administrators, while their enrollment has gone down. Recently – the president of the Colts Neck School Board, who is focused on protecting the status quo and her own position of power – lashed out against us for suggesting we should start mandating the regionalization of services.

As chair of the Senate Education Committee, I can say that we have heard from many educators and administrators across the state that they cannot just keep raising local taxes – and from residents who say they cannot afford to keep paying high school taxes.

I couldn’t agree more.

We cannot continue to pay the salaries of school superintendents, extraordinary special education and specialists like guidance counselors in small individual districts that could reduce costs by merging or sharing personnel. With 600 plus districts – by mandating regionalizing costs such as healthcare, waste management, snow removal, IT, administrative costs, special education, mental health and so much more – we can save tens of millions for taxpayers while also improving the quality of education for our students. We can even do simple things such as mandating that local K-8s coordinate with regional high school districts, coordinating curricula and sharing contracting costs. We had a parent at Freehold Regional at one point tell us that the Colts Neck K-8 school system didn’t even coordinate on math so when their child got to the regional school district, the child was lost. These are easy mandatory shared services that would help, but the bureaucracy of school board members focused on self-preservation like Colts Neck, don’t allow that.

We are beginning a very important conversation. 600 plus school district – 600 individual school board attorneys, engineers, architects, insurance brokers etc. How do we regionalize some of these services while also improving the quality of education?

New Jersey’s public education system is one of the best in the nation. We want to keep it that way and we recognize the political challenge of merging and consolidating school districts in a home rule state like ours. But New Jersey has way too much government. Consolidating services and school districts would not only save money through efficiencies and reduce the burden on taxpayers, it would also improve resources and expand programs available to students in the consolidated schools.