Rowan School Regionalization Institute
Rowan School Regionalization Institute
Rowan School Regionalization Institute
The Sweeney Center for Public Policy and the Rowan University College of Education have teamed up to form the Rowan School Regionalization Institute to assess the impact of the S3488 school regionalization law, make recommendations on policies to advance regionalization and conduct regionalization studies for interested districts.
The bipartisan legislation, sponsored by then-Senate President Steve Sweeney and Senators Vin Gopal and Declan O’Scanlon, provides state grants for the full cost of regionalization studies, provides financial incentives for districts with shrinking enrollments, gives merging districts flexibility to agree on new cost-sharing formulas, guarantees tenure and seniority rights for teachers.
On September 16, 2023, voters in Atlantic Highlands and Highlands voted 2-1 to merge their two elementary school districts and their shared grade 7-12 district into a pre-K-12 Henry Hudson Regional School District in the first successful regionalization under the new law and the first in New Jersey since South Hunterdon vote to regionalize in 2014.
The Rowan School Regionalization Institute team includes:
- Lucille Davy, who championed school regionalization as state Education Commissioner and as co-chair of the Legislature’s bipartisan Economic and Fiscal Policy Workgroup. Davy recently retired from her law practice to work on education reform issues through the Sweeney Center;
- David Lindenmuth, Ed.D., Director of the Rowan College of Education’s Institute for Educational Leadership,, who served as superintendent of schools in four school districts in Burlington, Camden, Gloucester and Salem counties;
- Sweeney Center Director Mark Magyar, who negotiated the S3488 legislation with the NJEA, the N.J. School Boards Association and other education groups, and meets frequently with school boards and administrators across the state to discuss regionalization issues; and
- G. Kennedy (Ken) Greene, Ed.D., the former Newton superintendent of schools, president of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators and educational consultant who is an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University’s Department of Education Policy and Social Analysis