The Christie administration is backing away from attempts to consolidate and regionalize many of the state’s small school districts and will instead encourage the schools to share more services.
The Legislature mandated that steps be taken to combine small districts — ones that do not educate students all the way from Grades K to 12 — as a way to cut costs and coordinate the curriculum in the elementary, middle and high schools. Half of the districts in Bergen and Passaic counties would have been affected.
It was to be a fledgling step toward consolidation in a state with 600 school districts, but like regionalization efforts before it, this one has been derailed.
Education Commissioner Bret Schundler said forced consolidation would "generate a lot of lawsuits and political acrimony." The Education Department will instead encourage districts to share more services, including personnel, he said.
But the author of the legislation that mandated the consolidation plans said he wants to know why the state is flouting the law.
"Given the governor’s fervent commitment to reducing taxes, it’s all the more disturbing that his administration would chose to ignore the law," Sen. Bob Smith, D-Middlesex, wrote in a letter to Schundler this week.
Smith said the plans, formulated after months of committee hearings, were designed to bring long-term property tax relief.
"To give that up without further discussion is just crazy and it’s against the law we