Montague BOE wants out of High Point contract

The Montague Board of Education, which will hold its first meeting of the new year tonight, has filed a petition with the state seeking permission to terminate its send-receive agreement with High Point Regional High School in pursuit of re-entering a send-receive agreement with Port Jervis High School of New York for students in grades 9-12.

The Montague Board of Education, which will hold its first meeting of the new year tonight, has filed a petition with the state seeking permission to terminate its send-receive agreement with High Point Regional High School in pursuit of re-entering a send-receive agreement with Port Jervis High School of New York for students in grades 9-12.

The petition, dated Dec. 23, follows an Oct. 15 presentation to the Montague School Board — the entirety of which was omitted from the agenda published prior to that meeting — by a team of lawyers from the Morristown firm of Porzio, Bromberg & Newman, which Montague retained last year to try to get out of its contract with High Point. The presentation focused on the results of a feasibility study that Montague commissioned last year on the educational, financial, and demographic implications of severing the district’s ties with High Point.

The results of the study concluded that the impact on either school district educationally, financially, and on the racial balance of their respective student bodies would be negligible. A transportation route study commissioned by the board has since concluded that the costs and safety of transporting students to school each day would be improved by having them travel to and from Port Jervis — a shorter distance over less challenging terrain — rather than High Point.

In its petition to the state, Montague also cites what it says would be a decrease in the school tax levy by sending students to Port Jervis rather than High Point, a savings that Montague asserts would result not only from lower transportation costs but also from what school officials have said would be a $10,000 per-student tuition rate at Port Jervis versus the $16,041 currently being charged by High Point.

The petition states that none of these issues was properly investigated or researched as required by statute when a previous Montague board voted to end the relationship with Port Jervis in July 2013, and that the state education commissioner’s approval of that move — whose reversal the commissioner at that time and a subsequent commissioner refused to allow — was therefore not in compliance with state law.

The petition goes on to state that high school students from Montague would benefit by exposure to a more diverse student body at Port Jervis, which is said to have a 24.66% minority student population versus 11.15% at High Point. Montague students, who already are eligible for in-state tuition at New Jersey colleges, would also qualify for in-state tuition at New York colleges under a New York state law that guarantees in-state tuition to all New York public high school graduates regardless of residency.

The Montague board cited these considerations and what it asserted were “increasing concerns with the quality of education being provided to its students at High Point Regional High School” in an unanimously approved resolution this past October that authorized the preparation and submission of its petition seeking to end the relationship with High Point.

Should its request be approved, Montague has said “there would be a four-year phase-in period in which those students who already have begun high school in High Point Regional would be allowed to continue their education in High Point Regional through graduation” while future classes of incoming ninth-graders would attend Port Jervis until the transition was complete.

However, with the seven-member Montague board preparing to swear in three new members — Dale Bouma, Danielle Christmann, and Paul Brislin — at tonight’s meeting, the proposal to end the relationship with High Point and resurrect the 85-year relationship with Port Jervis appears bound to raise questions, concerns and possible objections similar to those that accompanied the July 2013 vote by a prior board to do the opposite.

Superintendent Timothy Capone said at the December board meeting that Montague students wishing to attend High Point would still have that opportunity, claiming that a state statute would allow them to do so. So far, however, he has not provided any details on how that would work and has not responded to a query from the New Jersey Herald asking him to identify the statute. A spokesperson for the state Department of Education also was unable to identify any such statute but said any decision by a school district to accept an out-of-district student, and the tuition charged for doing so, is typically a local decision left to the discretion of the receiving district’s board.

Just how High Point will respond to Montague’s petition, meanwhile, is not yet clear. The High Point board was preparing to meet in executive session Monday night to discuss what were referred to on its agenda as “legal items and personnel,” but no other details were provided.

However, High Point’s response could be dictated in part by a legal settlement it entered into with Montague two years ago. At the time, High Point had filed legal action accusing Montague of reneging on tuition payments for two high school students from Montague who had been assigned to attend out-of-district private schools for students with special educational needs. The dispute was settled in November 2018 when Montague agreed to pay the tuition in return for High Point’s pledge not to contest any effort by Montague to get out of their send-receive agreement prior to its June 2024 expiration date.

Under state law, entering or terminating send-receive relationships — whether in-state or out-of-state — requires approval by the commissioner of the state Department of Education.

Eric Obernauer can also be contacted on Twitter: @EricObernNJH or by phone at 973-383-1213.