Area School Summit Launches Quest for Shared Service Savings

Under pressure to continue identifying ways to reduce costs, the top three officials from five area school districts met May 19 to begin a collaborative project to identify new potenmtial areas to share services.

The summit was organized by the Long Hill Board of Education, which has an ad hoc Cost Containment Committee, according to Long Hill Superintendent Rene Rovtar. The Long Hill board invited the superintendents, business adminstrators and board presidents from Warren, Green Brook, Watchung and the high school to the summit.

"We talked about how we might want to expand shared services and how we might be able to foster communication (leading to more service agreements)," Dr. Rovtar said. "Everyone seemed very amenable to doing that."

At Monday's Warrn Township Board of Education meeting at Warren Middle School, Warren Board President Gregory Przybylski said the discussion went "a lot further than talking about lawn cutting."

"They were thinking about personnel, they were thinking about technology...they were thinking in a very broad scope," Dr. Przybylski said.  "A lot of good ideas were raised."

He said while the districts have many agreements in place, such arrangements are often not well co-ordinated, and that the first matter of business will be to create some organizational structure for communicating areas for potential savings.

"As an example, roofing projects are very expensive, everyone needs to fix roofs ... if roof projects are timed closer together, then a larger project could provide cost savings," he said.

Other possible areas for savings would involve better coordination of specialized teaching or staff services. While Dr. Rovtar noted there may be some contractual requirements to work out in such cases, she doesn't believe that would prevent the districts from being able to make such arrangements.

The summit ended with the establishment of a sterring committee of the districts' business administrators and superintendents, which will meet over the summer to gather ideas on how to "create more structured communication," Dr. Rovtar said, followed by another summit near the end of August.