Porzio Selected to Fight Regional School Funding Formula Decision

Porzio has been selected by the Borough of Sea Bright to challenge the Shore Regional High School Board of Education’s decision to deny a request for a referendum to modify the school funding formula. Principals Vito A. Gagliardi, Jr. and Kerri A. Wright will lead the matter.

The Shore Regional High School District is comprised of the communities of Sea Bright, Oceanport, Monmouth Beach and West Long Branch. Sea Bright has been fighting for over a decade the inequitable distribution of the school tax levy. Under a decades-old law, Sea Bright currently pays 20.8% of the total levy although its students represent only 3.5% of the total student population, in an arrangement that Gagliardi has called "hideously unfair." Carrying relatively higher property values, Sea Bright has been "forced to subsidize the communities with relatively lower property values.”

Sea Bright currently sends 23 students to attend school in Shore Regional, and was the only one of the four towns which received a tax rate increase in the 2014-2015 budget year.