POINT PLEASANT — The borough board of education, at its meeting on April 25, decided to postpone adopting the 2024-2025 school budget, while waiting for word on a state bill that could affect the amount of money available to the school district.
The new meeting will be on Monday, May 13, at Ocean Road Elementary School at 7 p.m. The May 6 workshop meeting has been moved to this date.
The state Assembly passed Bill No. A4161 on April 15, regarding S2 losses, and the bill now has moved to the state Senate as Bill No. S3081. S2 is the state’s school-aid funding formula.
Board Attorney Andrew Li said, “One of the items that is on for the agenda tonight is the budget hearing. Every year, the law requires the budget process to involve a budget hearing. The budget hearing must be done by a date no later than, this year, May 7. Now the budget that goes up to approval after the hearing, the latest date that can be is May 14. The potential monkey wrench in the works is if this bill passes, and it’s before the Senate on May 9, which is two days after the last day [school districts] can have a budget hearing, it may change the numbers available to districts for their budgets.”
“Presuming Governor Murphy signs it when he usually does, which is Mondays, the following Monday would be May 13, which is only a day before the final date to adopt the budget,” said Li.
He added, “If there is a change in the numbers as a result of this bill, and there is no guarantee this bill is going to be passed…but the reason this is important is because once you have the budget hearing, the budget that is heard cannot be changed in the intervening time between the hearing, May 7, and the last day that it can be approved, May 14. The timing of this is very problematic.”
Li, along with Superintendent Adam Angelozzi stressed that the budget would not change from now until May 13, and currently, there are no plans to alter the budget in any way. However, if this bill were to be passed, the district would have to make some “difficult decisions” regarding the budget, according to Superintendent Angelozzi.
“It is important to review options that could be on the table for next year’s budget. To be clear, we have a proposed budget that we did a presentation on two meetings ago…the impact to the average household would be $99 and that increase was 2.69%. We are allowed to go to 2% as per state statutes and the 0.69% waivers mostly due to rising health care costs. That is our budget today,” said the superintendent.
WHAT IS THIS BILL?
Li explained, “This bill would create the Stabilized School Budget Aid Grant Program…What this bill, if ultimately signed into law, would do is attempt to address school funding shortcomings that have been the bane of school districts across New Jersey for several years now.”
This bill would appropriate $71.4 million to create a grant program and allow a one-time tax levy increase over the two percent cap.
“Districts would be able to apply to this grant program and recover two-thirds of the loss in funding that they had (under S2), with the ability to also recover the remaining one-third through a tax levy,” said Li.
WHAT THIS COULD MEAN FOR THE DISTRICT
Li said, “The other ability that they might have, part of this bill, is if a school district has demonstrably received decreased aid since the 2020-2021 school year, they may be able to attempt to recoup some of that reduction in the form of an increased taxes…up to a maximum of 9.9% increase.”
Superintendent Angelozzi said, “The part I would draw your attention to is…the overall legislation allows for schools to (recoup) if they were cut from this year’s, to next year’s state funding. We are not cut from this year’s to next year’s state funding. (With) our equalization aid, we broke even. With full transparency, in special education aid, we gained another $100,000. Still, balancing the budget with all those rising costs, health care, salaries, energy, all those things, we were, as we approached the final budget, about $500,000 in the hole. The cumulative effect of S2 continues to hang over the district’s head.”
Over the course of the S2 cuts, the Point Pleasant Borough District has lost approximately 41% of total state aid allotment or over $2.3 million from funding in the 2017-2018 school year, the first year before S2 was implemented.
“The second part says that districts that had a loss since the beginning of this, since 2021 fiscal year, would have the ability to raise the tax levy equal to the amount that they lost. Depending on how that is calculated – which is not clear in the law if it is based on equalization – it would be $1.9 million to Point Pleasant Schools. If it is based on overall aid, it is $1.8 million,” said the superintendent.
Superintendent Angelozzi discussed some potential projects that the additional $1.9 million could help to fund. These include:
- Memorial Middle School field restoration (full sod and replacing sprinkler heads),
- Nellie Bennett soccer field restoration in collaboration with Point Pleasant Soccer Club (full sod and new sprinkler heads),
- Restoration of one teaching position,
- Addition of business labs at the high school for the business academy,
- Instructional supplies such as paper and glue, which have seen significant cuts over the year to aid in cost cutting measures,
- Locker rooms transformation at Nellie Bennett School to instructional spaces,
- A new $200,000 bus,
- A new bathroom at Ocean Road School,
- Enhancing technology infrastructure and redesigning the Life Skills room at the high school.
On Tuesday, Superintendent Angelozzi told The Ocean Star, “Point Pleasant School District strives to keep costs low for taxpayers while providing students with an exemplary educational experience. Year over year, the district boasts one of the lowest per-pupil costs in Ocean and Monmouth counties. To remain fiscally responsible, the district paid off an outstanding bond in the 2022-2023 school year and refinanced the last remaining debt to provide additional savings to taxpayers. Together, these savings represent $93 annually for a Point Pleasant Borough homeowner based on an average home assessment of $400,900.”
He added, “Additionally, the district is proposing a budget of $1.38 million under adequacy. The current funding formula combines the local fair share with state aid to determine the district’s adequacy budget. The adequacy determination is the amount of funding required to provide each student with a ‘thorough and efficient’ education under the state’s constitution, and our district has continued to remain under adequacy in recent years. The 2% property tax cap, declining state aid, rising health care costs and other inflation-related factors have required the district to make tough choices regarding human resources, information technology infrastructure, educational supplies, buildings and grounds expenses and other vital resources.
TAXPAYER IMPACT
Once again, these are purely hypothetical ideas the district could pursue if this bill were to pass the Senate, stressed Superintendent Angelozzi.
“If we were to go above that 2.7%, which is $99 (increase) for the average household, for every additional one more percent that we go up, that is $400,000 into the school district’s budget, and is an impact of $48 (increase) to the average taxpayer over the course of a year,” said the superintendent.
He further said, “Also worth noting here, Mr. Li had mentioned the legislation said you can go up to 9.9% total. If we recouped all the money, it works out to be four and a half, 4.7% depending on how it is calculated. At 4%, every 1% is $400,000, so we have 4% where we would be recouping $1.6 million and that would be $190 (increase) to the average taxpayer.”
This would be on top of the 2.7% increase of $99 per average household that taxpayers would be paying more this year if the district decided to pursue this plan.
As of press time, the board still planned to vote on the budget that was proposed at previous meetings.
“Right now, the legislation is written so that this is a one-time opportunity. It is not written to spread this out over upcoming years. Again, this option isn’t even on the table today. The legislation has passed the Assembly, next it goes onto the Senate,” said Superintendent Angelozzi.
“The New Jersey Assembly Bill A-4161 and Senate Bill S-3081 offer an option to districts like Point Pleasant Borough. The bills grant districts the option of financial assistance through tax cap flexibility. This legislation could support our district and schools toward continued high-quality education for all students in safe and supportive learning environments without further cuts to the district’s critical resources,” said Superintendent Angelozzi.
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