With just one day to go until their budget deadline, school districts facing millions in state aid cuts were rescued by a stopgap funding measure signed by Gov. Phil Murphy on May 14.
One bill would restore 45% of this year’s funding cuts to all 140 districts that lost funding under the S2 formula, which allocates state aid to districts. Another bill allows districts facing year-over-year cuts to increase property taxes in their districts beyond the state’s 2% cap, without seeking voter approval.
“If nothing happened, and these bills hadn’t passed, then we were looking to eliminate another 40 positions and that most definitely would’ve taken our class sizes into the 40s,” said Vanessa Pereira, the superintendent of the Lacey Township School District.
But legislators and superintendents agree more changes need to be made when setting the funding levels next year.
“This is not the right way to do school funding overall. I will be the first to admit that this was a temporary stopgap measure to stop these devastating cuts. The only thing we can do now is catch our breath and dive headfirst into tweaking the school funding formula so that we’re not in the same place next year,” said Sen. Andrew Zwicker (D-Middlesex).
