Westfield Unlikely Target for School District Consolidation

Westfield is unlikely to be recommended for a school district consolidation with a neighboring school district under plans currently under consideration by state education officials.

The executive schools superintendents in each county are currently studying consolidating school districts in their counties, subject to voter approval in affected communities. The consolidation push will be a top 2010 state education priority, according to Assembly Education Committee Chairman Joe Cryan, D-Union Township.

Cryan, the state Democratic chairman, made the consolidation announcement during a press conference in front of Westfield High School Thursday afternoon as part of a Democratic response to an education event Republican gubernatorial nominee Chris Christie was holding at the high school later in the afternoon. Cryan said the consolidation plan is being used to try to reduce the number of school districts statewide. There are currently 600 school districts statewide, a number which was reduced recently when Gov. Jon Corzine signed legislation abolishing school districts which did not operate schools. The overall goal of consolidation is to reduce property taxes, according to Cryan.

Cryan said factors being used by county education officials to recommend towns for consolidation include the size of the school district, geographical location of the districts in question and the socio-economic conditions of the impacted communities. For example, Summit would likely not be combined with Elizabeth, he said. Cryan said Westfield is not a likely consolidation target because of the size of the community.

Schools Superintendent Margaret Dolan confirmed this. She said she has been in contact with county education office about the issue, but the size of the district will keep it out of consideration. "We have 6,300 students," Dolan said, "I don't think we're a likely candidate for that at this time."

Towns recommended by county superintendents will need to vote on consolidation during a referendum scheduled for next September. All towns in proposed consolidated school districts would need to approve the consolidation.

Cryan said that while he is not sure of specific communities in Union County being studied for consolidation, he would not be surprised if there are recommendations to consolidate Clark and Garwood, and Mountainside and Berkeley Heights. Both pairs of districts have send/receive relationships where the smaller community sends high school students to the larger community's high school.

Christie, in a press conference following his education roundtable, came out against the consolidation plan, saying he prefers a more organic grassroots approach to the issue than the Corzine administration is promoting.

"Mandatory consolidation engineered out of Trenton is a bad idea," Christie said. "We should be encouraging school districts to study consolidation."