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April 4, 2020 – April 17, 2020
MOVING DOWN-RIVER
Upstairs Apartment at Strip Mall Ruined in Two-Alarm Blaze, Businesses Damaged Calamity Sparks Immediate Outpouring of Generosity from the Local Community By Douglas D. Melegari Staff Writer
Photo By Douglas D. Melegari
Bass River Elementary School.
Bass River Township Board of Education Tentatively Agrees to Allow Its District to Enter Send/Receive Agreement with Little Egg Schools By Douglas D. Melegari Staff Writer
BASS RIVER—The “intent” for the Bass River Township School District to become a send/receive, non-operating school district beginning with the 2020-21 school year has been unanimously approved by the Bass River Township Board of Education. The school board, which tentatively approved at a special March 25 meeting a send/receive relationship between the Bass River Township School District and the Little Egg Harbor Township School District for the upcoming school year, initially failed to advance the plan during its March 19 meeting with a 2-2 vote and one member abstaining. Jonathan Yates, who is the secretary of the Bass River Board of Education as part of a shared service provided by the Pinelands Regional School District where he serves as assistant business administrator, told this newspaper in a March 29 interview that a “formal agreement has yet to be presented to the board,” and the plan must also get approval from the county superintendent. “The intent was approved,” he said. “The (Bass River) board agreed to enter into a send/receive agreement, but the details are not finalized yet. We expect those to be finalized in April, if not, by May.” D r. M e l i s s a M c C o o l e y, s h a r e d superintendent of the Little Egg Harbor and Pinelands Regional school districts, told this newspaper that the Little Egg Harbor Township Board of Education also tentatively
approved of the send/receive relationship. She declined to comment further on the matter, citing that the agreement was not finalized. She later referred this newspaper to Yates for comment. The Pine Barrens Tribune reported last year that the Bass River Elementary School, the Bass River district’s only school, was the subject of an ongoing feasibility study due to its growing debt and declining enrollment coinciding with a loss in state aid. “In order to enter into a send/receive relationship, you have to have a feasibility study conducted,” Yates said. “It does not determine where students go. You have to have that determined ahead of time. It looks at a number of factors that the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) looks at. …The feasibility study concluded it would be feasible for a send/receive to take place.” Bonnie Adams, president of the Bass River school board, told this newspaper in a March 28 interview that Bass River Township School District’s enrollment is projected to decline from a current 94 students to 78 or less students during the upcoming school year. According to a recent budget presentation, the Bass River district had 125 students in 2010. She contended that the decline in enrollment is the result of a “variety of reasons,” which include some families leaving the municipality, some choosing “choice schools” for their children and others choosing to send their kids to private schools.
“The decline in enrollment also came at the same time that the state is giving us less money than what we received in aid last year,” Adams said. As previously reported by this newspaper, Democratic Governor Phil Murphy signed Senate Bill S-2 into law in 2018, which modified the state’s school funding formula. It is the position of both Murphy and the NJDOE that a decrease in funding to school districts should coincide with a drop in enrollment; and that school districts are otherwise overfunded if enrollment drops, but aid remains flat. Yates told this newspaper that student enrollment and school funding “basically go hand-in-hand.” He said the Bass River district is projected to a lose almost $250,000 over a seven-year period, ending with the 2024-25 school year. The district lost some $30,000 in state aid, Yates said, for the current school year and is projected to lose some $64,000 in state aid for the 2020-21 school year. Additionally, the district “most likely” won’t be receiving some $29,000 in emergency aid that it has been given for the last two years, according to Yates. “There has been no indication that the emergency aid is going to be available,” Yates said. Bot h Ad a ms a nd Yates told t h is newspaper that the district does not have any money in its reserve accounts to See MOVING/ Page 7
TABERNACLE—A two-alarm blaze last Saturday damaged a couple of businesses and destroyed one of two second-floor apartments that are part of a strip mall in Tabernacle Township. Several vehicles parked near the main entranceway to the affected apartment were also either damaged or destroyed. The Celebration Plaza fire, which was first reported at 4:03 a.m. on March 28, according to Tabernacle Fire Company #1 Chief Andy Cunard, displaced a mother, her boyfriend and two children from the affected apartment. “They were already outside when I got there,” Cunard said. “They were inside the home when the fire started.” Cunard, who said he was the first firefighter to arrive at the scene of the blaze and did so just four-minutes after his pager sounded, told this newspaper that fire was already showing in the attic above the affected apartment, and coming through the roof, upon his arrival at the scene. However, while the flames “traveled the whole distance of the attic,” he said, a closed door in the second-floor apartment had stopped the flames from progressing throughout the entire facility. The attic, as seen from the road, only runs the length of the affected apartment. “The fire went into the attic before we even got there,” Cunard said. “With the wideopen nature of the attic, the fire just traveled throughout it, with nothing to stop it. Doors do an amazing job of stopping fires, and the door inside the apartment did an amazing job of stopping it on the second floor.” Fi refig ht e r s, he said , ha d i n it ial ly encountered some difficulty extinguishing the flames in the attic as the roof “did exactly what it was designed to do” and prevented water being used to fight the blaze from getting inside the attic. “The fire was burning underneath the roof, and protected, essentially, by the roof,” Cunard said. “Eventually, we got to it.” T he affected apar t ment, which sits above a Dunkin Donuts doughnut shop and Tabernacle Family Medicine, was “burned” and “completely destroyed,” according to Cunard. Pictures posted online showed most of the apartment’s belongings either had been charred or melted. See BLAZE/ Page 13
INDEX COVID-19 Information... 5
Here’s My Card............ 12
Easter Guide............... S1
Job Board.................... 14
Games..........................11
Local News.................... 2
Marketplace................. 14
Worship Guide............. 15
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