May 27, 1998|By Jennifer Farrell, INQUIRER CORRESPONDENT
MERCHANTVILLE — The Merchantville school board has received what may be the final blow to its 16-year effort to sever the town’s sending/receiving relationship with the Pennsauken school district.
A one-page order from state appellate Judge Sylvia B. Pressler rejects Merchantville’s appeal of a ruling by the state Board of Education denying the town permission to send its 92 high school students to Haddonfield.
Noting that Haddonfield had withdrawn from a tentative agreement to accept the Merchantville students, the order signed this month by Pressler dismissed the appeal as moot and denied Merchantville an extension to look for a new partner.
“It’s hard to imagine starting all over again,” said Mike Sullivan, the Merchantville school board president. “The way the state law reads, you’ve got to have a partner. Once Haddonfield pulled out, we were stuck in a kind of difficult position.”
He said no decision had been made on a further appeal but called the chances unlikely, estimating the board has spent at least $150,000 on the initiative since 1988.
“It’s hard to imagine that we would want to spend more,” he said, adding that a feasibility study to find a new receiving partner would cost $50,000 to $100,000.
Pennsauken Superintendent Howard Kurtz expressed satisfaction with the ruling and said he was not surprised by the outcome.
“We hope that this will put the issue to rest,” he said. “It is our belief that the young people of Merchantville get a quality education at Pennsauken. There’s no need to disturb the existing relationship.”
The send/receive battle dates to 1982, when Merchantville first announced it wanted to break its then-10-year contract with Pennsauken – an announcement that did not go over well with Pennsauken school officials, who argued it would hurt the district financially and disrupt the high school’s racial balance.
Merchantville’s students are predominantly white. The Pennsauken student body is one of the most diverse in the county: about 48 percent white, 32 percent African American, 17 percent Latino and 3 percent Asian.
The two districts went to court, and Merchantville’s request was denied. Then, in the early 1990s, the legal finagling began again. The case went to an administrative law judge, then to the state’s Commissioner of Education, and in 1992 to the state Board of Education, where the issue languished for about five years.
