Freehold Borough Schools Get $2M Aid Boost In Murphy's Budget

FREEHOLD, NJ — The Freehold Borough School District, which has been squeezed by growing enrollment for several years, is receiving an increase of more than $2 million in its state aid for the 2020-2021 school year.

That's the amount announced by the state Department of Education on Thursday, two days after Gov. Phil Murphy announced his $40.98 billion budget for New Jersey for the 2020-21 fiscal year.

Figures released by the state Department of Education show the borough school district, which has seen a 31 percent increase in enrollment since the 2008-2009 school year, will receive $17,351,053 in aid, a $2,096,571 increase over the 2019-2020 year.

That increase comes as the Freehold Regional High School District — where Freehold Borough students attend high school — is scheduled for an aid cut of nearly $5.8 million in aid. Both the Freehold Borough increase and the Freehold Regional cut are a result of S2, the law signed by Murphy in 2018 that put in specific timelines for addressing the needs of underfunded districts and also cutting adjustment aid from others.

Freehold Borough has been one of the districts that has been one of the highlighted in efforts to push the state to fully funds public schools. The district has seen its enrollment rise from 1,320 students in the 2008-2009 school year to 1,729 in 2017-2018, the most recent year available on the Taxpayers Guide to Education Spending on the education department's website.

Rocco Tomazic, the superintendent of the Freehold Borough Schools, said the increase would put the district at 70.6 percent of the state school funding it should be receiving.

The Education Law Center highlighted Freehold Borough's issues in 2016, noting the district was $550 per student under adequacy. Its increased enrollment also came with significant increases in at-rist/low-income students, who make up nearly three-quarters of the district's enrollment.

"Our public schools rank as the very best in the nation in large part because of our commitment to investing in classrooms in every community," Murphy said in his state budget address on Tuesday. "School funding is an investment in our future."

Tomazic said the 2020-2021 increase puts the district closer to receiving 100 percent of the funding it should receive by 2024-2025, the end of the seven-year changes pushed through under S2, the law that amended the School Funding Reform Act of 2008 to put timelines on funding changes across the state.

"We’re glad to see historically struggling school districts such as Freehold Borough, Red Bank, and others finally starting to receive the resources they need to excel," state Senator Vin Gopal and Assembly members Eric Houghtaling and Joann Downey said in a joint statement. "After many years of struggling to compensate for static funding in the face of growing enrollment, it’s important that we’re now starting to provide these students with the support they’ve long gone without."

"With that said, several schools in our districts are also on-track to lose state funds due to declining enrollment over the past several years — and in several cases, in greater proportions than the schools that are gaining funds," the statement said. "Just as a sudden infusion of aid can provide a big boost to struggling schools, so too can a sudden hole in a school’s budget pose a grave threat to vital student programs. It’s important to continue our efforts to build a more equitable funding system for all Garden State schools, but we need to do all we can to help schools transition painlessly to the new funding realities."

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