Parents Launch Save Middletown Schools Website

MIDDLETOWN, NJ — This website has now been launched, savemiddletownschools.com, by Middletown parents who seek to prevent three schools in the district from closing.

Last Tuesday, superintendent Jessica Alfone proposed closing Leonardo and Navesink elementary schools, and Bayshore Middle School, to close a $10-million budget gap. (The $10-million gap may be even higher, as high as $15 million, as the district does not get final funding numbers from the state until mid-summer, said BOE President Frank Capone.)

The community pushback to closing schools was fierce and passionate.

"This is all happening so abruptly, without proper communication to the families, students, staff or community," the Leonardo Elementary School PTA told Patch last week in an email. "The mental well-being of our students and staff has been disregarded, and we have not been shown the financial data ... The $10M gap is something the BOE created by not being transparent with the budget or plan prior to March 18."

Also, this petition calls for an independent audit of the Middletown school district's finances. (There's also this petition, signed by over 6,000 people, to keep the three schools open.)

"An immediate, independent forensic audit of the district’s finances for the past five years to determine if funds have been mismanaged or improperly allocated," reads the first. It also accused the Middletown school district of "overspending" to educate students, as the district spends approximately $21,000 per student, above what the state deems is an adequate spending level of $15,000 per student.

However, Capone said $21,000 is what it actually costs to educate each Middletown student, a number that exceeds the amount the state funds — $15,000.

Also, the Middletown school district is audited, every year by the state Department of Education. The audit results are published on the DOE website, and you can read last year's audit here. The Middletown school district also publishes the audit results on its website yearly, under "Annual Financial Reports."

The spokeswoman for Save Middletown Schools is Jennifer Cox, who has two children at Navesink, one of which is supposed to go to Bayshore next year, and a third who is supposed to start kindergarten at Navesink in September. So her family will be personally affected if the schools close.

Patch asked Cox what parents think of a proposal to raise property taxes 10 percent if it means keeping the schools open, as Alfone revealed Monday is a new, third option (the other two are 1. close the three schools or 2. lay off approximately 120 teachers/administrators in June).

She responded, speaking for the entire parent group:

"You would be hard pressed to find ANY parent who wants to see their taxes go up. If you're following along on the comments sections of some of the Facebook groups, which I'm sure you are, you're seeing the same narrative we're now seeing: Frustration on the part of many residents in town who feel as though they're being punished for the financial mismanagement of the BOE. Those frustrations are valid and warranted. But by no means should they be directed at anyone other than the people responsible for putting us in this position in the first place."

Prior Middletown BOE member Nick DiFranco said in this video the current school board should have told the community five years ago the district was in serious financial trouble:

"In 2020, the Middletown Board of Education embarked on a refresh of their strategic plan," said DiFranco. "The board hired a third-party demographer to provide an estimate of population-growth patterns. The numbers were troubling ... Enrollment was predicted to decline. Now, this could have been the start of a community-wide effort to meet these challenges. Instead, the exact opposite happened. In 2021, the demographic study was discredited by the new board leadership. Strategic planning was shelved. And the board became laser focused on expensive and ultimately futile legal battles with Trenton over masked mandates and return-to-school protocol. When the students returned to school, the board set about losing even more lawsuits, and deploying patchwork budget fixes. And the enrollment challenges were buried."

"And so, here we are .... It didn't have to be this way. This board had a five-year head start to level with the families of this district."

The Leonardo PTA also called for the district to come up with a 1-year, 3-year, 5-year and 10-year plan that would outline several scenarios, including closing schools and keeping them open, and that includes current and projected costs for upkeep and planned future revenue for the district.

"Once that is known, then a sensible plan can be put together and voted on," said the group.

They called what Alfone presented last week "a slapstick presentation that leaves no room for accountability — it urges for closures, but does not give dollar details for the why, or the savings, or what additional expenses there will be. None of this was done with transparency."

As Patch reported, the Middletown school district has talked about redistricting multiple times in the past eight years. The two superintendents before Alfone, plus past BOE president Pam Rogers, all discussed the need to close some Middletown schools (the district closed Port Monmouth Elementary in 2020) and redistrict, citing drops in student enrollment and state aid.

If three superintendents have now suggested it, could school closures be necessary in Middletown?

"There needs to be a separate presentation on the redistricting push," responded the Leonardo Elementary PTA. "Middletown is ONE town; the current school zones were put into place to keep things fair and to unite the town."

"Parents all throughout Middletown have spent countless hours over the last week pouring through data, crunching numbers and brainstorming on creative solutions to narrow the budget deficit," said Cox Tuesday. "We're not looking for a fight. We're searching hard for a solution, one that will ensure the future of a quality education in Middletown."

Middletown Has Discussed Closing Schools/Redistricting Before (March 22)

It's Not Just 3 Schools: Middletown Seeks To Close More In Future (March 20)

3 Middletown BOE Members Vote No On Budget That Would Close Schools (March 19)

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