One of the principal tasks facing the nine-member Middle Township Board of Education in 2025 will be the selection of a new superintendent to replace Dr. David Salvo, who will retire at the end of the school year.

Having joined the district in 1995, Salvo will be completing 30 years of service to the education of the township’s children. He became superintendent in 2014.

While we wish him well in his retirement, it is vital that we consider the importance that must attach to the task of hiring his replacement. As we pointed out in our Oct. 2 editorial, many of the school systems in Cape May County are confronting a future that will be characterized by financial instability and a strong need to close a performance gap relative to similar districts across the state.

There is little reason to believe that federal funding for PK-12 public education will increase significantly in the near term. There is also no basis for assuming that state funding will return to levels it achieved while adjustment aid was still a part of the funding process.

If anything, all the signs point to continued pressure to have what were state or federal funding cuts absorbed into the local property taxes. We just saw that very attempt in Dennis Township, where voters were asked to take on additional school taxes permanently as a way of offsetting losses in state aid. In a special election held in September, 81% of the voters said no. An earlier attempt, in 2023, to add $1.3 million to the school tax levy also was rejected by the voters.

We need to start facing some new realities concerning school finances in this county. Can we continue to afford 29 separate schools across 19 municipal, regional and county school districts for a total enrollment of fewer than 12,000 students? The municipal tax levies for support of the non-county-funded schools amount to $175 million a year, a figure very likely to climb significantly in the face of lower state aid.

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Selection of the next superintendent in Middle must be

done by a process characterized by transparency.

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Consolidation studies have been done but have never been made a subject of broad citizen involvement. The most recent one, involving the Woodbine, Dennis Township and Middle Township districts, was largely dismissed as undoable by Salvo, among others.

In Dennis Township, we are even confronted with a school board that has said in writing that it cannot meet the constitutional requirement to provide a “thorough and efficient education” for the township’s students. This is a serious admission. Under state law, the Department of Education may take action separate from that of the local elected officials.

It is important not to lose sight of the fact that this pressure on school property taxes comes from a combined set of districts in the county that do not fare well when compared to state averages for student performance.

Scores on proficiency tests for math and English language arts are almost exclusively designated as below state standards except in some island school systems, which are often very small. The one exception is the Ocean City School District, which is among the larger ones in the county and meets testing standards.

For the 2022-2023 school year, Middle Township had a 38% score in English language arts and an even lower 29% score in math. The state’s summative scoring system, which brings together a number of performance variables to create a single score, shows Middle Township schools well below desired levels, especially at the high school.

This is not to focus criticism just on Middle. Performance problems abound in the county.

We raise it here because any solution to the financial, structural and performance issues plaguing our schools will somewhere touch on the Middle Township School District. Middle has the largest share of the county’s children and is the most centrally located of the school districts. One sees Ocean City to the north, Lower Cape May Regional to the south, and Middle at the heart of it all.

It is crucial that the next superintendent of the Middle Township School District be capable of looking beyond the district when the inevitable issues arise about how to better position education in the county. For that reason, the selection of the next superintendent in Middle must be done by a process characterized by transparency and deep involvement of the people.

We do not need someone to come in and manage the status quo. We need an organized discussion now on the future of PK-12 education in the county. From Middle, we will need the participation of an experienced educator with the ability and personal flexibility to contribute in a way commensurate with heading up the county’s largest district.

Starting now, the process for selecting a new superintendent in Middle Township must be an open process.

Quotes from the Bible

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” James 1:5