Berkeley On The List Of Proposed School Districts To Be Merged

BERKELEY TOWNSHIP, NJ - A panel of New Jersey lawmakers have suggested that hundreds of school districts could be merged with larger ones and the Berkeley Township school district is one of them.

The district has only four elementary schools and is one of the few districts in southern Ocean County that is not a K through 12 district. The others on the list are Stafford Township, Eagleswood, Tuckerton and Long Beach Island.

The "Economic and Fiscal Policy Working Group" calls for merging all K-4, K-5, K-6, K-8 and K-9 school districts into K-12 school districts to improve the quality of education and promote efficiency.

The Berkeley district has a number of administrators. Each of the four elementary schools has a principal and an assistant principal. The district has a superintendent and an assistant superintendent.

The Bayville Elementary School, the Clara B. Worth Elementary School and the H&M Potter Elementary School have students from pre-kindergarten through fourth grade. The Berkeley Township Elementary School has only fifth and sixth graders.

The lawmaker's panel also calls for the merging K-5, K-6, K-8 and K-9 school districts into K-12 school districts, the establishment of two county school district pilot programs, and full state funding of extraordinary special education programs.

Berkeley Superintendent James Roselli was hired back in 2012, after the board hired a consulting firm for $6,500 to do a search for a new superintendent. Central Regional Superintendent Triantafillos Paralapanides had offered to do the additional job for free, but he was never given an interview.

Roselli defended the job titles at an August 2016 Township Council meeting to clear up what he said was "misinformation" about them.

"You are going to hear things over the next few months that are going to try and trash these people," Roselli said.

Roselli said he and Board of Education members had decided to realign job titles, without adding more personnel.

The assistant principals were culled from existing staff and will focus on observations, situations that require investigations, and supervision of staff and students, he said then.

Do you think the Berkeley Township school district should be merged with Central Regional, which would then become a K-district? Tell us in the comments section below:

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