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ASBURY PARK PRESS 2-6-08 Brick, citing budget concerns, considers closing schools
"The administration and board scrutinized each and every expenditure," he said. "We're looking at all options." Persi criticized the state Department of Education for inequitable funding...Brick spends about $9,100 per student... "The phone's been ringing off the hook. Everyone's ballistic," she said.
February 6, 2008 Asbury Park Press - "Parents urge Brick officials not to close schools"
Sunday, Feb 3 "Westfield says schools shortchanged"
"...the district is trying to avoid further burdening those taxpayers, but it is becoming increasingly difficult. "We're looking at every single line item in the budget," she (Westfield Supt Dolan) said. "We go out to bid on everything, from the delivery of energy to copy paper. We try to be proactive and control costs, but our whole goal is how to best educate our students."
ASBURY PARK PRESS 2-6-08
Brick, citing budget concerns, considers closing schools
By CHRIS LUNDY
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
Insufficient state aid and a budget cap are causing officials to consider closing some schools, Superintendent Melindo Persi said.
"We are unable to put together a balanced budget," he said.
He said there is a possibility of closing one school or perhaps two, but stopped short of saying which schools might be affected.
Parent Lorrie Schulz said she met with school officials Tuesday and was told by Persi that there was a proposal to close Herbertsville School, Osbornville School and the Laurelton School.
"We the taxpayers have no say. It's appalling," she said.
The district is being pinched between a state cap that prevents a budget increase greater than 4 percent and a disappointing increase in state aid of about $700,000, Persi said.
The administration is presenting closing schools as one of several options to the Board of Education at a meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m. today at Veterans Memorial Middle School, he said. The board will discuss options but won't make a decision. Residents can make comments and suggestions at the end of the meeting.
Persi stressed that the administration and board members have been looking every place they could to save money.
"The administration and board scrutinized each and every expenditure," he said. "We're looking at all options."
Persi criticized the state Department of Education for inequitable funding. Districts considered needy receive more state aid than Brick.
Brick spends about $9,100 per student, while schools designated as needy by the state could spend about $15,000, he said.
"We're up in arms," Schulz said. "I just moved here so my kids could go to Herbertsville." Other family members live nearby. There are eight children between 3 and 12 all in the same family going to the same school, she said.
Her daughter, a second-grader, was hysterical. Schulz said she asked, "Do we have school tomorrow?"
When schools close, the property value in the community drops, she said.
In order not to close the school, she and other parents proposed closing the Primary Learning Center, which is home to district kindergartners.
Putting these children back into the elementary schools would fill holes in enrollment and keep the elementary schools open, he said.
Mary Ellen Ryder moved to the neighborhood for the same reason.
"I wouldn't have moved to Brick unless my kids went to Herbertsville," she said.
She has two children, one too young for school. She said she would try to keep the news from her second-grader until the closure is final.
There have been rumblings about Herbertsville being closed for years, but there was never anything substantial behind the rumors until this suddenly came up, she said.
"I was livid. This is not how you do things," she said.
She said she hoped the issue was just a scare tactic to get the budget passed in April, she said.
Parent Nicole Vincenti said her 8-year-old daughter, Marisa, overheard a conversation she had about the possible closures and asked, "Mommy, are they going to close my school?"
Vincenti said she had to explain to her third-grader that there was a money issue that is causing the problem, and that people are going to try to keep the school open.
"The phone's been ringing off the hook. Everyone's ballistic," she said.
February 6, 2008
Parents urge Brick officials not to close schools
By CHRIS LUNDY
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
Parents and district staff urged administration to keep open three schools that they
fear might be closed in order to absorb some of the cost of a $3.5 million hole in the 2008-09 school budget.
Interim Superintendent Melindo Persi said one option in covering the shortfall would be the closure of the three schools with the lowest attendance: Osbornville School, Herbertsville School and Laurelton School.
Persi did not advocate closing the schools, but presented it as an option to Board of Education members and about 300 parents and district staff members gathered tonight at Veterans Memorial Middle School.
The closures would only soften the blow by $1.9 million, he said.
Other options would be to push the costs of sports, parking, and graduation caps and gowns to parents.
Ultimately, it is the board's decision, and administration is only providing the numbers, not making suggestions, he said.
Audience members were allowed to provide suggestions, and some were emotional.
"Stop threatening our kids every year,'' parent Kim Faccone said, referencing dire budget predictions made during last year's budget cycle as well.
The board will present a finished budget at a meeting to be held at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 12 at Brick Township High School.
Westfield says schools shortchanged
Officials contend 2% rise falls far below other districts'
Sunday, February 03, 2008
BY ALEXI FRIEDMAN
Star-Ledger Staff
Westfield school and town officials say Gov. Jon Corzine's school funding plan, meant to distribute about $8 billion worth of state aid more equitably, has instead left them out and left them scrambling to do more with less.
For starters, those officials complain the district will receive just 2 percent more in school funding for next year's budget under the recently passed law, while similar affluent districts will get much more.
Westfield's state aid, about $5 million, is just a fraction of the district's $76 million school budget, and funding from the state has been essentially flat over the last six years, school board President Ginny Leiz said.
School Superintendent Margaret Dolan said the $400,000 the district must contribute to its pension fund for next year's budget will offset the meager increase. "Don't tell me you're giving me $99,000 next year because you're not," she said, referring to the 2 percent bump.
Because about two-thirds of town property taxes go toward funding the school system, the modest school aid increase will "definitely have an effect on the tax rate," Westfield Mayor Andy Skibitsky said.
Town officials are still hashing out this year's municipal budget, and Skibitsky said it will be a challenge to maintain tax increases at 4 percent, around the rate of inflation. Westfield is considered a wealthy town, he said, but many families will feel the impact from higher taxes. "It's not as if every family is rolling in disposable income," he added.
Westfield is consistently ranked among the top public school systems in New Jersey, but school officials say the tight budget has already sliced into its future.
As the school board works on its 2008-09 budget -- a preliminary version is due Feb. 15 -- Leiz said they will have to "go slower" when it comes to implementing new programs. Curricula are reviewed every five years, with courses often added or revised, new textbooks purchased and teaching practices changed. "That all requires more money," she said. "This is not the year to be doing it."
The district continues to study ways it can save money, big and small, said Dolan, and recently switched to a more cost-effective insurance carrier for all employees, along with instituting an energy conservation program. Staff cuts are always last on the list, she said.
Dolan acknowledged that the state's school-funding formula needed to change, but, she said, "the taxpayers can't support all the costs" of that change.
Corzine's plan, which was signed into law last month, boosts school aid by $532 million while keeping funding to 20 of 31 Abbott schools -- located in needy communities -- at current levels. In defending the plan, the governor has said it lays "down a fair and equitable aid formula for all our schools and all our children across the state."
But Westfield school officials said their district was shortchanged. In December, when the funding amounts were released, the district sent out a list detailing how similar wealthy districts received increases of 10 and 20 times Westfield's.
Among those in Union County are Cranford and Mountainside, which received 20 percent increases; and Scotch Plains-Fanwood and New Providence, which received 10 percent hikes. Westfield, however, had the highest median income of those towns, at $113,817, according to 2005 figures.
But a district's wealth compared with others' is just one of the components factored into the elaborate school aid formula.
Among the others are enrollment increases or decreases, the number of students in special education and the number of students "at risk" due to poverty, and a district's current spending level as compared with its "adequacy budget." A district's adequacy budget is the funding level the formula says is necessary to provide thorough and efficient education.
Westfield has increased its enrollment by 15 percent over the last seven years, and the state has found it spends under the adequacy level, which is supposed to count in the town's favor. Officials are also worried funding may be reduced to its well-regarded special education program.
Lynne Strickland, who is director of Garden State Coalition of Schools, an advocacy group representing mostly suburban districts, said details of the school-funding plan are still being studied. But because Westfield is considered a district that can afford to pay for its schools [by the state], it will have to look more to the taxpayers for help and less to the state, she said.
Dolan, who is in her first year as Westfield school superintendent, said the district is trying to avoid further burdening those taxpayers, but it is becoming increasingly difficult. "We're looking at every single line item in the budget," she said. "We go out to bid on everything, from the delivery of energy to copy paper. We try to be proactive and control costs, but our whole goal is how to best educate our students."
Alexi Friedman may be reached at (908) 302-1505 or afriedman@starledger.com.
