Superintendent, school board consider fee scale to bring tuition students into district

By SUZANNE MARINO
Staff Writer
MARGATE - The student population in the city’s three schools has been on the decline for the last five years.
City officials blame the high cost of real estate in Margate for the exodus of families to the mainland as well keeping new families from buying in the community.
Margate’s long term planning commission that released their findings in November said the city should continue to watch the enrollment numbers over the next few years to see if the city would need to consolidate its current three schools into two.
District Superintendent, Dominick Potena said that just waiting and watching was not sufficient. So both he and the Margate Board of Education have developed a fee scale that could bring tuition students to the district.
“The long term planning commission gave us the feeling that we should market the school district and aggressively seek tuition students. Our plan is to seek students in those grades where we have room to take them and where the students will have no impact, where we have available classroom space and do not need to add a teacher or a desk and in most cases we would not even need to purchase any additional books,” said Potena.
The exact fee is not yet determined. Potena said that number will be established once the per student cost for this school year is established.
The formula will be that the first child in the family that would be attending would cost the family the full cost (currently $14,000) the second child in the same family would be 70 percent of the full cost (currently $9,000) and the third child, 30 percent of that amount (currently $4,000).
“If I have 55 students in one grade and I am able to go to 60 then I can consider taking in five students in that grade and making each class 20 and not need to add any additional personnel, there is no financial impact on the district,” said the superintendent.
“We would re-evaluate students on a year to year basis (to ensure they were not creating a financial impact on the district),” he said.
“I have no crystal ball and I do not know what the future will bring. There may be an increase in the student population going forward, we will see. But what we are able to do now is to offer an educational program that most people who are stakeholders in are happy with it,” said Potena. “Without a strong school you do not have a good community. The long term planning commission wants to promote the district and we are responding to that. They were unanimous in their vote and the board of education agrees that the strength of a community is directly related to the strength of the schools.”
Currently, Margate does allow for the children of staff to attend Margate schools for a fee of $2,200. Potena said he believes there are four such students attending the districts schools.
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