Freehold Regional Loses $5.8M In School Aid In Murphy's Budget

FREEHOLD, NJ — The Freehold Regional High School District is faced with significant cuts for the 2020-2021 school year, after learning it will be subject to a $5.8 million cut in state funding.

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.

The cut is the result of S2, the law signed in 2018 by Murphy that set a schedule of cuts to so-called adjustment aid that a number of districts have been receiving since the School Funding Reform Act of 2008. Freehold Regional never received adjustment aid, however.

Under Murphy's budget proposal, Freehold Regional is scheduled to receive $40,732,705, a reduction of $5,782,685 from the 2019-2020 state aid award. That cut comes despite Murphy's statements in his budget address about the need to fund public schools to provide tax relief to the middle class.

"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 address. "School funding is an investment in our future."

"But, just as important, school funding is property tax relief," he said. "Let's be absolutely clear – every new dollar in school funding is a new dollar of property tax relief. Every new dollar we provide is a dollar that doesn't have to come out of the pockets of property taxpayers."

The $5.8 million cut for 2020-2021 is more than double what was initially projected as the cut for the school year, based on a total cut of $25,211,640. The Education Law Center, which in 2018 calculated the potential cuts, estimated Freehold Regional would lose $2.5 million in the 2020-2021 school year.

The total cut in aid to the Freehold Regional district through S2 clearly will be higher than the what was initially projected. The district is receiving $9,985,047 less in aid in the 2020-2021 budget than it received in 2008-2009, the first year the School Funding Reform Act was in place. (Freehold Regional received $50,717,752 in aid in 2008-2009.)

"(The Freehold Regional High School District), who educates children for $3,500 less than average and runs comprehensive high schools with efficiency due to our regionalized scale, simply cannot absorb this," said Charles Sampson, superintendent of the district.

Because the cuts so far under S2 are so significantly different from the Education Law Center estimates, it's impossible to guess how deep the remaining cuts will be. The Education Law Center in January called for a halt to the cuts until state officials can take another look at the so-called formula the education department uses to calculate state aid. The state continues to refuse to release the formula and the methods it uses for the wealth calculations for each town, despite repeated Open Public Records Act requests. Read more: School Districts Seek 'Secret' Math Equation In School Aid Fight

Though Murphy also announced a $50 million allocation for "stabilization" aid, the process to apply for that aid will mean any funds Freehold Regional might receive will not be available until 2021 at the earliest.

Last July, the district, which serves 10,700 students from six towns, applied for emergency aid following the 2019-2020 cuts. It did not receive a response until December, at which time the district was notified it would receive no aid.

Though advocates of S2 and some state officials continue to insist taxpayers in the towns that make up the regional district — Freehold Borough, Freehold Township, Howell, Colts Neck, Marlboro and Manalapan — are not paying their fair share of property taxes to support their schools, raising the tax levy to make up for the cuts isn't an option.

Freehold Regional remains limited by the 2 percent cap on levy increases, and Murphy vetoed in January a bill that would have allowed districts that are under adequacy a waiver of the cap to bridge the hole created by the aid cuts.

A referendum asking voters to approve an increase in the tax levy would not be resolved until four months into the school year, too late for cuts made in the next 11 weeks (school districts must file their budgets with county superintendents by May 15) to be undone.

"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."
"Several schools in our district are 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," a joint statement from state Senator Vin Gopal and Assembly members Eric Houghtaling and Joann Downey 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," the statement said.

The 11th District legislators called the stabilization aid "little more than putting a bandaid on a much larger wound."

"We need to take a long, hard look at more expansive reforms that could bring down costs in education and modernize our school funding formula," the statement said. "By fully funding extraordinary special education aid, we can free up millions of dollars in school budgets across our state, making sure that special education funds follow the child instead of the district and lifting the burden on local property taxpayers."

"We also need to strengthen regional school districts, supporting efficiently consolidated districts like Freehold Regional, and review and update the school funding formula to account for present-day costs of special education, transportation, free and reduced lunch, and other expenses."

"If we come together, we fully believe that we can continue building a fairer, more efficient, and more effective school funding apparatus for all New Jersey students," they said.

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