In light of Greater Media’s slanted coverage in “Colts Neck Representatives Object to Earle Students Bill” (Jan. 10), Colts Neck residents should know that the comments and data given by the officials you have elected are mere scare tactics and falsehoods that only impair the broader view of your community and shamefully reinforce the segregation of select residents from your grammar schools.
You may not know it, but I represented you as chairman of Neighbors Opposed to Privatization at Earle (NOPE) from 2008-10, volunteering with wonderful people from Colts Neck, and our grassroots mission succeeded. Thousands of area residents, eliciting support from our local, state and federal officials, convinced the U.S. Navy to buy out the Laurelwood contract that was detrimental to all, namely itself.
Today, we face a similar albeit lesser challenge, where the Navy wants to rent 20 to 25 Colts Neck homes inside Naval Weapons Station Earle to civilians. Elected officials correctly paint this as a bad plan that distracts the Navy from its core mission of national defense and amounts to the Pentagon financially kicking the can (a bad contract) down to our road.
We are unified on that side of the issue as well, yet differ elsewhere.
After NOPE, I served two terms on the Tinton Falls K-8 School District Board of Education, which for decades has subsidized Colts Neck’s obligation to educate its own residents, but which faces school crowding and backs a joint bill in the state Senate (S-2881, Ruiz) and Assembly (A-4453, Downey and Houghtaling) that would benefit all stakeholders, without compromising any child’s quality of education or causing you a tax “burden,” as coined by the Colts Neck school board president.
As I understand it, these children can participate in all other facets of your community and are now embraced in Colts Neck High School. So, why not in your elementary schools?
Left out of Greater Media’s coverage is that the Colts Neck K-8 School District has received about $12 million of federal aid ($700,000 a year) to defray educational expenses to educate kids on the base. To this point, it has been free money for your school board, which about 30 years prior sued to get out of its obligation to comply with state residency and education laws.
Also missing was that, based on a study commissioned by the Colts Neck school board in 2014, Colts Neck’s K-8 enrollment will skid below 800 by 2020 vs. 1,600-plus children in 2005-06; this year’s count of 950 children is inflated solely by a newer pre-kindergarten program, else the count would be 85 children less.
As voters, you resoundingly booted from office the people who spearhead the study and sought to consolidate three schools to two and to rent one school to Trinity Hall (girls high school), speaking at board meetings of your clear desire to maintain the status quo.
With those figures in mind and Tinton Falls seeking relief to clear a few seats for new residents expected with the redevelopment of Fort Monmouth, it is clear that the Colts Neck K-8 School District has ample capacity, plus federal funding, to follow the lead of your high school district and do what is right for your excluded residents in the name of public education. Doing so will not result in a $1,000 increase in school taxes or an additional $1.2 million expense as fabricated by the Colts Neck school board president.
It will only give kids an opportunity to become full-fledged members of the Colts Neck community and to continue to receive a great public education without the strain of an hour-plus bus ride.
And as the federal government already pays the Colts Neck school board to do the job, there should be zero financial impact to embrace 50 to 60 of your residents from the base into your elementary schools, especially as enrollment trends confirm that you will be down to 65 to 90 children per grade level within four years.
The Colts Neck K-8 School District, for that matter, stands to benefit from a separate bill in Trenton from Sen. Jennifer Beck for more state aid for children connected to the base, in addition to the Section 8003 aid that presumably would accompany the children and that is now received by Tinton Falls.
This could go toward saving teachers’ jobs, continuing to run a top-notch school district and, foremost, extending an olive branch to the military service members who live in your own town and, at their stated desire, can send their kids to your high school, but not to your elementary schools.
I encourage Colts Neck residents to press your Board of Education officials to change their tenor. Calls to Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Teresa Ruiz and Assembly representatives Joann Downey and Eric Houghtaling also would help prompt change for the good and mend several fences.
Bill Holobowski
Tinton Falls
