The Shore Regional High School Board of Education should moveQuick decision on staffing doesn’t serve Shore Reg. very cautiously in considering scaling back the positions of its only music teacher and one of the two art teachers.

The Shore Regional High School Board of Education should moveQuick decision on staffing doesn’t serve Shore Reg. very cautiously in considering scaling back the positions of its only music teacher and one of the two art teachers.

The proposal to make the positions part time was sprung unexpectedly on the teachers and the public during the past week and now is being rushed to a hasty conclusion with a vote anticipated at tonight’s regular board meeting. That’s unseemly.

It’s unfair to the teaching staff, and it’s unfair to the voters who just gave their approval to the high school’s budget a week ago Tuesday with no inkling that reductions in staff were in the offing. Linda Conway, president of the Shore Regional Education Association, was right when she said outside the board’s agenda meeting Tuesday night: "This is a breach of the public trust."

It also appears to be a done deal before the public gets to be heard.

Residents of the regional school district — which comprises the towns of Sea Bright, Monmouth Beach, Oceanport and West Long Branch — should have had the right to offer some input during a longer process about the direction and future of the arts in the high school.

Music and art enrich the students’ lives, not just for now but throughout the future, and spark their creativity. The board and Leonard G. Schnappauf, the district superintendent, cite a burgeoning budget crisis and declining enrollment in the courses taught by the affected teachers as justification for cutting back the positions. But that’s the historic cop-out boards of education have taken in times of financial straits. They go right to the arts, and the first thing they do is cut the music and art classes.

Shore Regional is known as a sports powerhouse. No one on the board is talking about cutting out a varsity sport, perhaps one each for both boys and girls, so as to free some money to underwrite the struggling music and art classes. Perhaps in sharpening their budget-cutting knife they should.

The administration and board must have known for a long time prior to the election at which the budget was voted on that these reductions were in the pipeline. They are now under the gun because of a provision in their contract with the teachers, which requires that notice be given to tenured teachers by April 30 regarding any change in their jobs for next year. That is no excuse, however, for failing to proceed properly on such an important issue.