Montclair is facing a hard fiscal reality: The school district has a $19.6 million budget hole.
Residents now have a choice. Vote “yes” to increase property taxes or see the district layoff more than 100 teachers and staff across all of its schools.
To avoid the layoffs, the Board of Education approved a special election for Dec. 9, asking voters to approve two questions. The first asks to increase school taxes by $12.6 million, which would be about $1,000 for the average homeowner, to cover last year’s budget gap. The second raises taxes another $7.6 million for this year’s budget gap. It also asks permission to conduct a forensic audit of last year’s financial records.
“These staff layoffs are going to directly affect class size, security, the health and safety of every student in every building. The nurses alone, right? Not having a nurse in A building is, it’s scary. Each year the district presents budgets and reports that painted the picture of stability,” said Daniel Marcketta, president of the Montclair Education Association, the union representing teachers in the district. “Yet behind those numbers were unexplained transfers, and decisions the public was never given the chance to fully understand.”
The union hasn’t been shy about blaming the past administration, including former Business Administrator, Christina Hunt, and former Superintendent, Dr. Jonathan Ponds, who died last summer.
Superintendent Ruth Turner started the job on July 1 and has said she quickly realized the numbers didn’t add up.
Turner said she is looking to other districts that’ve faced budget holes recently, due to fluctuations in state aid, but says a yes vote on the first question is imperative to avoid a costly loan.
“We would have to borrow an advance on our state aid, which comes with a state monitor of generally 10 years and then we would also have to pay that back roughly around 1.2 million dollars each year that would be withheld from the state aid that we would get,” Turner said. “Question two would mean we would have to make the $7 million in cuts in this current year, which is very disruptive to our students and to our school system, and make cuts to 26-27 that’ll be fairly significant.”
The union members are calling on the board members who presided over previous budget approvals to step down. As of Monday, one board member, Brian Fleisher, submitted his resignation, saying in a letter he believes he would have made different choices with accurate information. In that letter, Fleisher said he does not want his name on the ballot to undermine a “Yes” vote on the questions.
