The president of the High Point Regional High School Board of Education said Wednesday that his district plans to seek legal clarification from Education Commissioner David Hespe regarding the rights of Montague parents wishing to keep their ninth-graders in the Port Jervis, N.Y., school district rather than have them attend High Point.

By ERIC OBERNAUER

eobernauer@njherald.com

The president of the High Point Regional High School Board of Education said Wednesday that his district plans to seek legal clarification from Education Commissioner David Hespe regarding the rights of Montague parents wishing to keep their ninth-graders in the Port Jervis, N.Y., school district rather than have them attend High Point.

The acknowledgement follows Port Jervis Superintendent Tom Bongiovi’s announcement at a school board meeting Tuesday that school officials there were wholly open to such an arrangement -- even as an expected 31 freshmen from Montague prepare for their first official day of classes today at High Point Regional High School under a send-receive agreement ratified by Montague and High Point in July 2013.

Earlier, on Wednesday, the school held a half-day orientation for all incoming freshmen.

“If there are people whose older children have graduated from Port Jervis in years past or who are going there now, and who want to keep their younger children there -- and if that’s something that state law would allow us to do -- then I would like to help out any family who wants to avoid having their children split up or who wants to keep the consistency of what their older children have been doing,” High Point Board President Paul Derin said.

Derin indicated, however, that he would not be in favor of extending the courtesy to Port Jervis Middle School graduates wishing to go on to Port Jervis High School if they did not already have older siblings enrolled there.

“Ideally, if it were up to me, I would be in favor of taking each set of circumstances on a case-by-case basis, but we have to draw the line somewhere,” Derin said. “We can’t keep it open-ended.”

High Point Superintendent Scott Ripley confirmed Wednesday that his district planned to seek clarification from the commissioner but declined further comment, stating essentially that he did not want to say anything that might inadvertently aggravate the situation or create an issue where there wasn’t one.

This past weekend, however, Ripley had acknowledged receiving a letter from a Montague parent wishing to send her child, who recently completed the eighth grade at Port Jervis Middle School, to Port Jervis High School rather than High Point.

The letter, of which copies were sent to both the Montague and Port Jervis school districts, made reference to a New Jersey statute -- N.J.S.A. 18A:38-21.1., section 1.a -- that guarantees any student already enrolled in a school district as part of a send-receive relationship the right to complete his or her secondary education within that district. Ripley, in his reply to that letter, had indicated that the statute in question was applicable only to send-receive

relationships between New Jersey school districts and not to relationships that crossed state lines.

The language of the statute, however, says nothing to that effect and appears to be silent on that point.

A second parent has since said she, too, would like to keep her daughter in Port Jervis though it was not clear if she was planning to send a similar letter.

A third parent said Wednesday that she, too, had sent a letter communicating her wish to keep her son in Port Jervis. She said late Wednesday that Ripley had replied by saying he would need to seek further clarification regarding the statute.

Multiple sources, meanwhile, have indicated that the parents wishing to keep their children in Port Jervis are being advised by an attorney and that additional parents of students about to start the eighth grade at Port Jervis Middle School may be exploring similar options.

Among them is Jennifer Olenick, who has made known her opposition to the send-receive agreement with High Point for more than a year. Olenick told the Port Jervis school board Tuesday that “you need to contact the parents of those ninth-grade kids that are expected to start at High Point and let them know that Montague and High Point are breaking the law” by denying them the choice to attend Port Jervis High School.

Derin said the legal uncertainty was enough that High Point school officials have since agreed to seek clarification from state officials.

“It’s a tough one for us when you have attorneys all reading it differently, so we figured the best thing was to go right to the top and get a definitive response from the commissioner. We figure that’s the best source so we can answer appropriately and definitively,” he said.

In the meantime, with attorneys for the Montague and Port Jervis school districts having apparently agreed to hold face-to-face talks on preserving the option for some Montague students to remain in Port Jervis, it is still conceivable an agreement to that effect could be worked out. When that might happen is another matter, and as of Wednesday, it appeared those talks had yet to take place.

Bongiovi, the Port Jervis superintendent, asserted in a statement Tuesday that Port Jervis has been willing for more than a year to negotiate a final resolution on this point.

He said that at the Aug. 19 board meeting, “the Port Jervis Board of Education unanimously agreed to allow school choice for all Montague students going from eighth to ninth grade regardless if they had a sibling in the school or not. Port Jervis made Montague aware of this decision the next day and has been awaiting a meeting with them since that time.”

Bongiovi declined after Tuesday’s meeting to elaborate on his statement, which appeared to be in response to Montague Board of Education President Beverly Borrego’s comments last week accusing Port Jervis of dragging its feet on the matter by not responding in a timely fashion to a letter from Montague’s attorney.

A phone call to Borrego on Wednesday was not immediately returned.