Transparency First: Berkeley Heights Moves Toward a Regionalization Study

Shauna’s Notes on the 01/22/2026 BHPSNJ BOE Meeting

On the agenda for the Berkeley Heights School District board meeting for Thursday, January 22nd, is an item under Finance to give approval to the district to apply for a School Regionalization Efficiency Program (SREP) grant.  These state-level grants are available to public schools and governing bodies to help pay for studies that look into the feasibility of creating regional schools.  For years in New Jersey, there has been talk of how inefficient districts are since, in most cases, there is a single school district for each New Jersey town.  Residents will argue both for and against combining districts, and Berkeley Heights is no exception.  The town has been part of a regional school before, then became its own district which receives students from Mountainside and receives students into the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing program.

In 1937, the first regional school district in New Jersey was created: the Union County Regional High School District for grades 9 – 12.  It served students from Berkeley Heights, Clark, Garwood, Kenilworth, Mountainside, and Springfield, with high schools Arthur L. Johnson and Jonathan Dayton High School in operation.  This first regional school was authorized via referendum from voters, with wide acceptance from most.  Only New Providence Borough declined to participate. (At the time, Berkeley Heights was New Providence Township,)  Proponents listed limited local resources and more efficiencies at the administrative level as reasons to move to a regional school.  Opponents cited having greater control of fiscal and administrative decisions as factors in keeping schools aligned more closely to the towns.  These same arguments are in play today.

After a post-WWII boom significantly increased the student population, in 1953 voters approved a $1.95 bond to build a third high school in Berkeley Heights. After completion in 1960, Governor Livingston Regional High School became home to students from both Berkeley Heights and Mountainside. The David Brearley Regional High School in Kenilworth opened six years later.  With four high schools, the Union County Regional High School District saw successes with extracurricular activities and lower administrative costs, but there were difficulties with governance and budgets.

By the late 1980’s Union County Regional had the highest per-pupil costs in the state.  (Sound familiar, Berkeley Heights?)  “Equalized valuation” – which this article will not go into – meant that towns were paying unequal amounts for their students’ schooling. Despite the boom in population, the schools were not operating efficiently from a fiscal standpoint, as each school had fewer than 2,000 students.  Governance continued to be messy, with complaints that the board of education was not responsive to local concerns. These issues led to requests to dissolve the regional district and an expensive referendum, along with eventual lawsuits involving distribution of assets.  Of note, even after the formal dissolution approved in May of 1996, completion of the distribution of assets persisted until the year 2004.

According to Grokipedia, fiscal issues arose from “challenges in maintaining consensus on expenditures and reforms.” [ ]  For Berkeley Heights, specifically, this is an important detail to keep in mind.  Recent disagreements with the 2026 referendum questions and similar problems with per-pupil spending echo the history of the Union County Regional District.  We can learn from this history, as long as it is taken into account.

Should the Berkeley Heights board of education approve the District to apply for the SREP grant, and should the grant be approved, any agency that may be hired to complete the study and do research needs to be thoroughly vetted, and the district absolutely MUST be completely transparent each step of the way, not relying on pre-formed surveys sent to limited participants – as was done with the recent referendum – to shape foregone conclusions at the administrative level. 

This early stage is when the administration needs to involve residents, not by raising the topic at unattended board meetings, and not with surveys. 

They should put as much effort into public participation in this crucial matter as they have into trying to convince the taxpayers to further fund the highest-spending district in the area.

Read Laura’s Notes on the Rest of the 01/22/2026 BOE Meeting Agenda