Panel: Shared Services Hampered By Contracts, 'Bad Blood'

A legislative-sponsored panel identified union contracts, student performance and "bad blood" between communities as possible hurdles in moving towns and school districts to a more shared services approach.

The group of eight, speaking at Union County College in Cranford, touched on how school districts can share services with other districts and with the town government. Assemblyman Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield), who sponsored the round table, said he organized the gathering due to the current economic situation, which has included declining revenues for local government entities.

"We are in a crisis," Bramnick said. "I need a solution."

The panelists agreed that a shared services approach is possible if the entities sharing the service work together and keep a positive attitude in regards to the outcome of the shared service.

Westfield Board of Education President Julia Walker and Westfield BOE member Ginny Leiz touted several Westfield initiatives as being beneficial to a close working relationship. She mentioned the joint committee of BOE and Town Council members that meets monthly on management and financial issues, including ways the two government entities can work together. Leiz said several shared services came out of this program, including the use of town fueling stations by BOE vehicles and plowing. She noted the committee meetings helped lead the town and BOE to both purchasing the Honeywell Emergency Alert system.

Barbara Horl of the New Jersey School Boards Association said Westfield's working relationship between the two entities is not the norm statewide. She said many towns do not feature the regular meetings between the Council and school board. Horl touted several initiatives she's seen on a statewide level in terms of shared services, including trash, recycling and bulk waste pick-up, the purchase of sand and road salt, the use of crossing guards, signage, staff training and telecommunications.

She noted that the decade-old decision by school districts in Verona, Caldwell and West Caldwell to share a food service director has resulted in savings for the local school districts. Many districts around the state have agreements in place, many of them informal, to cover grandparents day.

Besides Horl, Leiz and Walker, the panel featured attorney Vito Gagliardi Jr., Chester Board of Education Vice President Kerri Wright, former Summit City Administrator Ken DeRoberts and Union County Executive Schools Superintendent Carmen Centuolo.

Gagliardi seconded the call for the small liaison meetings between the school boards and town councils, noting that he has seen a greater sense of communication to be a top concern when he is talking to groups looking to implement shared services agreements.

Centuolo said she is finding several examples of shared services agreements in place in the county. Clark and Garwood school districts share a business director, and the two districts will likely start new programs for shared services in the special education arena as soon as a new school superintendent is hired in Clark. Centuolo noted that many of the districts have implemented shared services in terms of career development programs and speakers.

Union contracts and student performance were the panel's biggest concerns in merging all schools into a county-wide entity--a possibility for Union County during a school merger pilot program Gov. Jon Corzine was looking to implement.

Walker noted that before living in Westfield in 2001, she lived in Florida, where county governments run school districts.

"Impact matters," Walker said. "Our taxes are high. Before we start figuring out how to reduce the amount of people on the payroll, you want to see how it affects student outcome."

The language of existing contracts hinder local school districts, Gagliadi said.

Centoulo said an overall county merger would be blocked because of the salary grade move. It would have districts making the salaries of the teachers in the largest district, which Centoulo said routinely has the higher salaries coming in to play in merged districts. She noted this was a result in the deregulation of the county regional school district in the 1990s which led to bad blood between multiple communities in the former district.

"Going through the deregulation process before, Union County will never recover from that emotionally," she said.

While certain practices and state laws present barriers to merging districts, the panelists noted that districts can get around the practices with shared services. Gagliardi said that in Mine Hill when two towns ran into legal issues with how to merge two police departments, one department ended up taking on a contract to patrol the other community under the name of the existing department. This move allowed the larger community to dismiss inherited police officials they did not want.

Local school board members in the audience noted that several state laws currently hamper district management and could hurt shared services discussions. One area addressed was the state's mandate that a local school district cannot keep a surplus larger than two percent of the budget of the previous year. Union Township Board of Education member Linda Gaglione said this restriction almost cost her school system several million dollars.

Gaglione was not alone in bringing the issue up.

"That is not a lot," Cranford BOE member Jill Brown said of the surplus cap.

Several audience members and panelists said they were not in favor of the county government's magnet school system, which includes a new performing arts magnet school, in addition to the vo-tech classes and science magnet school on the Scotch Plains campus.

Centuolo used the panel to highlight several of the iniatives her office is working on. This includes a new transportation plan to reduce costs for districts. She said she would like to see districts pool together when seeking bus routes, in particular the small districts. She said it would be cheaper for the districts to pool together and have a bus run through several towns instead of the one bus service per district model currently in effect.

She also highlighted the concept of merging the K-8 districts in the county with the K-12 districts. She said this would include merging Clark and Garwood, Mountainside and Berkeley Heights and Winfield and Kenilworth into three districts.

Board members in the room said that the local districts lose money from sending children to the magnet school, which could be saved by not locating programs on the Scotch Plains campus. The magnet school concept was created to allow top performing students interested in science attend the special school.

Centoulo, who is a state education department representative, said she encouraged county officials to spread the new magnet schools around to different school districts in order to allow the local districts to receive the tuition money from neighboring towns. Assemblywoman Caroline Casagrande (R-Monmouth County), who attended the round table, said magnet schools in Monmouth County work in this fashion.

Districts were warned against seeking "instant gratificaton" in implementing shared services. DeRoberts, who implemented a joint fire dispatch system between Summit and Millburn when he was Summit's administrator, said districts should keep the long term focus in perspective when decision-making occurs.

"Don't try to do it all at once," DeRoberts said. "There is nothing wrong with staggering it."

Town officials attending the program said they found the ideas discussed to be a benefit for future budget discussions.

"I really think it was a good event and it provided ideas for the community and school district to work together on, with the goal of saving taxpayer dollars," Westfield Councilman Keith Loughlin said.

"In Westfield we have a close relationship with our school board and we will continue to meet regularly."

School officials in audience shared similar thoughts to Loughlin in the lasting impact of the panel.

"I thought it was great to talk to people in schools and the state school boards association," Springfield BOE President Irwin Sablosky said. "Bramnick and the other assembly members here heard what we had to say."