It’s finally happening. The Sea Isle Board of Education won’t be able to open its school doors this fall for kindergarten through third grade students.

And it’s because the county Superintendent of Schools, state Board of Education, state Department of Education and the governor’s office have failed, despite all the rhetoric about consolidation.

Sea Isle school board members have seen this crisis coming and have made repeated attempts to get the state to force the tiny Sea Isle school to close its doors and send the students to the Ocean City School District, where many of its students are educated anyway. The high school students have been at Ocean City High School for decades and in recent years the intermediate students have gone there as well.

Sea Isle City residents have proven they won’t fund their own district, refusing budgets repeatedly. There are only 23 students scheduled to be educated next year in Sea Isle City at a whopping cost of $59,000 per student.

The only sensible decision is to have the state force Sea Isle to close and get those students educated in Ocean City. Without the forced closure, Ocean City won’t accept the students because it also will have to accept the teachers and doesn’t want that added expense or the option of bouncing some of its own teachers to accompany the teachers from Sea Isle.

The county just bounced the 2012-13 budget from the Sea Isle School district because Sea Isle asked for about $287,000 for administration, which covers far more than administrators. The county Board of Education said it can spend $41,500.

While we understand the cost is too high, that is because the little district shouldn’t be open at all.

This is a no-brainer. The county, the state, the governor’s office and our legislators should make the decision to consolidate this district into Ocean City.

It will be better for the students and for the taxpayers.

Someone should take this right to the blustering governor who loves to cite educational problems in New Jersey. Well, this is a big problem because it flies in the face of the consolidation mandate and is wasting money.

Get Gov. Chris Christie’s attention on this and get it done so Sea Isle families can rest assured they will have a good education, at a good cost, next school year.