BOE seeks lease for Bayshore Jointure
Parents concerned special needs school would lose space
BY ERIN O. STATTEL Staff Writer

The Matawan-Aberdeen Regional School District Board of Education spent most of the Oct. 20 meeting reassuring parents of students at the Bayshore Jointure Commission that they would not be "kicking their children out" of the school they presently attend.

Parents had turned out in large numbers because of concerns that the district planned to ask the school for children with special needs to vacate the Cambridge Park Elementary School in Aberdeen, where the Bayshore Jointure Commission is housed.

"My son is a student at the Bayshore Jointure Commission and at Back to School Night the parents were informed that our children were going to be without a school come June," said Ellen Gray. "Is that true?"

Superintendent Richard O'Malley responded that the district and the commission were working out a written lease agreement.

"The Matawan-Aberdeen Regional School District and the Bayshore Jointure Commission are currently working on a lease agreement because we currently do not have a written lease agreement," O'Malley answered. "I don't know where all the speculation is coming from. It is probably just from the contractual negotiations process, but of course we will put the kids first and foremost."

According to Bayshore Jointure Commission Superintendent Arthur Waltz, who is also superintendent of Union Beach schools, the Bayshore Jointure was founded approximately six years ago to provide quality education to children with autism and other special needs at a fair tuition rate to school districts.

Waltz said that current enrollment is around 54 students up to age 12 and the school charges $32,500 per student. According to the Board of Education, the school district sends 19 children to the school, more than any other district.

O'Malley said that contract negotiations had started in September and that he had been asking the Bayshore Jointure Board of Education, which is comprised of nine superintendents from Bayshore school districts including O'Malley, for specifics about their use of the Cambridge Park School building.

"What if a lease isn't constructed, what happens to our children come June?" Gray asked O'Malley.

"We are never going to throw any student out on the street … I think we will have a lease," O'Malley responded.

"If this school is closed these parents and myself will go elsewhere, and it will be more expensive for Matawan-Aberdeen taxpayers. I am one of them," she said. "These kids have a lot of obstacles in life and they should not have to worry about … leases or anything like that. Autism is an epidemic and we all have to pull together to work on more than just money."

Gray finished her turn at the podium to a round of applause.

According to Waltz, O'Malley informed him in late summer that the Bayshore Jointure might have to leave the present facility to accommodate a state mandate to expand the pre-kindergarten program.

"I was told that we would have two years to vacate and then I received an e-mail saying we only had one year left in the building," Waltz said. "We pay $126,000 a year to rent nine classrooms. I don't want to put Dr. O'Malley in the hot seat, but if the school is running great, and we were paying bills on time, what is the problem?"

Waltz said that funding would be a problem if the school had to relocate.

"One of the problems is that we do not charge a lot of money for our programs so we do not have millions of dollars in the coffers waiting to be spent," he said. "We only charge districts $32,500 a student, and sometimes they do not even need to pay that because their students graduate from a program here before the year is over."

Waltz said that the program is ideal because it is close to where students live.

"We have students that come from Matawan, Aberdeen, Hazlet, Keyport, Highlands, Atlantic Highlands, Union Beach, Keansburg and Henry Hudson schools," Waltz said. "We probably could find another facility someplace like Colts Neck, but that is too far for some of these kids to sit on a bus for so long."

Parents at Monday's board meeting seemed wary of O'Malley's assurances.

O'Malley continued to explain why the issue of a preschool initiative came up and how that factored into the issue with the Bayshore Jointure lease agreement.

"The preschool initiative is coming from Gov. [Jon] Corzine and as I talk to this board, they need to know about all the possibilities in the long term," O'Malley explained. "That will be part of the long- term contractual agreement with the Bayshore Jointure."

O'Malley maintained that the negotiations with the school for children with special needs are not contentious and the lack of a lease was discovered by the board's auditors.

"Everybody is scrambling for space but I can't ask this board to enter into any agreement without all of the facts," he said.

Board President Patricia Demarest also addressed parents' concerns.

"It is in the best interests of the jointure to have a lease," she said. "It is about housing the program, not about its existence. Because so many of the students were from Matawan-Aberdeen, we did have the space so they were placed at Cambridge Park and we had, and do have, a great working relationship with them and that is probably how the lease was overlooked but our auditors need us to have a written lease."