Millville, CCTEC still butting heads on sports access

MILLVILLE – New Jersey is likely to end up refereeing a dispute between the city school system and the Cumberland County Technical Education Center over whether full-time TEC students can participate in sports and other extra-curricular activities in their home school district.

Millville intends to bar full-time CCTEC students from such participation, a position that schools Superintendent David Gentile staked out first and very publicly last November. He doubled down on that position at Monday night’s Board of Education meeting.

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On Tuesday, CCTEC Superintendent Dina Elliott responded that her district is preparing to file a complaint against Millville with the N.J. Department of Education to secure access for its students to extra-curricular activities.

The center, previously a part-time institution with a small facility in Bridgeton, opens in September as a full-time high school at a new and much larger facility on College Drive in Millville. That transition from part time to full time has changed how the center is viewed by sending districts, however.

A Department of Education decision would have wider implications, too. Cumberland Regional School District has taken the same position as Millville regarding accepting CCTEC students, according to Elliott.

At Monday night’s board meeting, Gentile told board members that his contacts from parents of students enrolling at the technical center are increasing. About 53 teens who otherwise would attend high school in Millville are enrolled at CCTEC as full-time students.

“I totally understand from a parent point of view that you would want the child to be able to attend the brand new facility up on CCTEC and also be able to have what you feel is good about the Millville district,” Gentile said. “But I don’t think that’s fair. And I don’t think that’s what this district should do.”

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Millville officials are chafed at losing growing numbers of students to other school systems, both the center and charter schools, in large part because state education funding follows those students out of the district.

Gentile also said that allowing CCTEC students back “opens up a Pandora’s Box” in that other schools could ask for the same right.

Millville school board member Robert Donato, who chairs the Finance Committee, said the trend also has an impact on the curriculum Millville can offer.

Elliott said the opposition of Millville and Cumberland Regional officials has led to students deciding not to enroll and even already enrolled students to change their minds. At least three Millville students have pulled out of CCTEC because of the dispute, she said.

“We feel, as a school district and as a board, it’s hurting our ability to enroll students and give them access to the Cumberland County Technical Education Center,” Elliott said.

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Elliott said all four sending districts to the center have been told that CCTEC will provide bus transportation, at its own expense, to get students back to their home districts to take part in sports and other activities. Vineland and Bridgeton have accepted that offer, she said.

Elliott said her district has taken the issue to the education commissioner’s office and been advised to file a complaint. What state administrative law precedent exists favors the right of out-of-district students to take part in extra-curricular activities in their home districts, she added.

Comments from Millville school board members on Monday night were in support of the administration’s view of the issue.

“At the end of the day, the students are going to have to make decisions on their life,” member Brianna Bucci said.

Board member Connie Johnson said it wasn’t fair that CCTEC students could compete with Millville students for opportunities. “That is the biggest complaint in the community, I feel,” she said.

Gentile acknowledged that the policy he favors has a downside for Millville. The district could lose access to “top athletes.”

“And while we’re going to miss them on the field, being a Millville Thunderbolt again, as I said, is more than just playing,” he said. “So I wouldn’t want to bring back players just because they’re exceptional.”

Joseph P. Smith; (856) 563-5252; jsmith@gannettnj.com