Great Meadows school district's failed break-up raises questions as state encourages more districts to regionalize

Formed in 1993, Great Meadows Regional School District marked New Jersey's most recent school district consolidation.

And it appears the two-town union will endure a little longer, despite the efforts of one of its constituents to separate. A panel of New Jersey Appellate Court judges earlier this month upheld previous state Department of Education decisions preventing Liberty Township from leaving the district.

What is less clear is the effect the court's decision will have on a state push for regionalization.

In arguments about why Liberty should be allowed to leave, attorney Vito Gagliardi said by preventing the separation, the courts are providing reasons for other districts to avoid consolidation.

"They're looking to break up because it's not working," said Gagliardi, who also represented the borough of Oradell, Bergen County, in its fight to withdraw from the River Dell Regional School District. Oradell's effort was denied the same day as Liberty's was.

The Great Meadows breakup attempt had already gone on for years. Liberty argues it bears an unfair tax burden and is paying at a higher rate than its neighbor, Independence Township.

Despite encouragement from state officials for municipalities and school districts to consolidate services, a system has not been devised that can guarantee savings to every town, Gagliardi said.

"Until you solve that problem, you're not going to get people to regionalize," he said.

Breaking up is hard to do

Under a state law established in 2007, executive county superintendents have the power to recommend the consolidation of districts to the state commissioner of education.

A 1999 report by a state Assembly task force on school district regionalization outlined some of the potential problems with forced regionalization. Among them were unintentional "financial disincentives" through uneven tax burdens, and the perceived loss of local control, the report found.

It also predicted, to a degree, the problems Liberty now faces.

"Withdrawal from a regionalized arrangement by a constituent municipality may prove overwhelming" because a majority of voters from all constituent municipalities must approve it, the report said.

In 2007, Liberty failed in a referendum to even out the tax burden. Liberty voters favored the tax restructuring, with Independence overwhelmingly opposed.

"There are some regional districts where all the parts get along in harmony ... and some that don't," said Mike Yaple, a spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association.

"We support regionalization but with the caveat that it should be decided locally. The same thing with de-regionalization," Yaple said. "No one knows their school district better than the people that live there, not people 100 miles away in Trenton."

Benefits of consolidation

Municipal attorney William Edleston, who represents Independence in the Great Meadows hearings, argues regionalization has its benefits.

Students in the Great Meadows district perform better than the state average, and, as administrators pointed out during a budget presentation, at a below-average cost per pupil.

"It's very hard to rationalize how (breaking up the district) would be in the interest of either municipality," Edleston said.