BERKELEY – Last year’s trip to Stokes State Forest might have been the last one for Berkeley students.
This year’s trip was cancelled due to COVID-19.
The pandemic also cost Montclair State University money. The university oversees the program. As a cost-saving measure, MSU shut down the New Jersey School of Conservation, laid off the employees, and turned the property over to the State Department of Environmental Protection effective July 1.
Berkeley students had been going on the weekend-long educational trip for decades. Literally, generations of local residents fondly recall the trip.
This was a “right of passage” for local kids, Mayor Carmen Amato said. He suggested finding a way for middle school students to have a day trip.
“The kids learned a lot of things they never knew about New Jersey,” said Councilman Angelo Guadagno, a teacher in town. “It’s a great thing for our children and I’m sorry to see it go.”
This was not the first time there was a problem in sending the students. Originally, it was a trip for fifth graders but it was canceled during the 2008-2009 school year. It had been cut by referendum because the cost – estimated around $78,000 – was determined to be too much for what critics called “sending kids on a three-day vacation.” The resulting uproar reinstated the program for 2009-2010, but this time sixth graders went, so that way no grade was left out.
Montclair said closing the School of Conservation was part of a 26 percent cut in operating appropriations by the state and more than $24 million in expenses incurred by the coronavirus. As a result, it laid off the 18 full time and two part time employees and returned the land to the State DEP.
The DEP was questioned about the future of having classes spend weekends there but there was no response by press time.
According to Montclair, the State Legislature transferred management of the School of Conservation to Montclair and provided annual funding for its operation and maintenance. After Fiscal Year 2010, the State’s line item funding them was eliminated, and money declined every year. Montclair made up the rest of the costs.
“In an era when both the science of conservation, and the education of future generations about conservation is critically important, it is a matter of genuine and considerable regret to the University that we can no longer maintain the School,” said Montclair State University President Susan A. Cole.
“Without any investment by the State over the past nine years, the University has found itself increasingly unable to sustain the quality of activity deserving of the School and the students, and with the current severe cuts to the University’s budget in FY2020, we simply cannot maintain it any longer,” Cole said. “The New Jersey School of Conservation is yet one more casualty of the coronavirus, and it is a circumstance of great disappointment to me personally and to the University community that we must take this action.”
