Debt Service Pushes Brick School Taxes Up Slightly

Brick Township homeowners will see an increase of nine-tenths of a percent in their school district property taxes for the coming school year, as the district continues to pay off debt from past bond issues, under the budget approved by the school board.

That budget included no increase in the tax levy due to the general fund portion, district business administrator James Edwards told the board.

But one school board member questioned whether the budget included realistic projections of staffing needed if the district moves to implement some form of block scheduling in the high schools.

“Do we have enough teachers?” board member Susan Suter asked Superintendent Walter Uszenski, who said the district will be able to accommodate the move, if it is made.

“We do not need more teachers,” Uszenski said, but Suter persisted, asking Uszenski how he was certain the district had enough, saying a report after a previous pilot program had said the district would need to hire several teachers if the district moved forward with the plan.

“Have you looked into it?” Suter asked, and Uszenski said he and district officials had been considering it for a few months.

“At this time there is no need for (more) teachers,” he said, adding that the district is looking at a modified version of block scheduling that would only affect English and math classes.

Uszenski also said there are fewer students than at the time block scheduling was first considered.

Edwards said the reason the district wouldn’t need more teachers is that the teachers would be teaching three longer classes instead of teaching six the way they do now.

“It’s the same amount of classes,” he said.

The total budget for the 2015-16 school year is $146,930,267 with a tax levy of $100,000,721. That levy is up slightly from last year’s levy of $99,113,095, which Edwards said is due solely to the debt service and equals about $25 per year for the average home.

“That part the board has no control over,” Edwards said, because that debt was approved by referenda for various projects in the past.

Edwards, in presenting the finalized budget to the board and the public, said the budget includes a $200,000 increase in the cost of tuition for students who attend programs at the Ocean County Vocational-Technical schools, a cost passed on to the district by the county. There also is an $80,000 increase in the cost of the extended year program for students with disabilites, money to add a robotics program at Brick High School similar to one in place at Brick Memorial, and money to add a bilingual kindergarten class.

About $300,000 was budgeted to increase the pay for paraprofessional substitutes, Edwards said, because the district saw a need to make the pay more attractive to fill in for those out sick. Though the pay increase hasn’t been set yet, Edwards said they estimated how much might be needed if the district had filled every single absence in the previous year.

The budget brought to board March 19 -- that was not approved as board members abstained from voting due to confusion over the amount of the tax levy -- included a nine-tenths of a percent increase in the general fund budget and would have paid for, among other things, new social studies textbooks.

Uszenski said those textbooks were cut when the budget was trimmed by nearly $900,000 between the March 19 meeting and a March 23 special meeting of the board, where the preliminary budget was approved.

New review books for the math and English portions of the SAT remained in the budget, Uszenski said, because the SAT is changing in the fall.

“Are there any teachers being cut?” Suter asked.

“No,” Uszenski replied. “No teachers are being cut.”

(School Business Administrator James Edwards answers questions about the 2015-2016 school budget at the school board meeting. Credit: Karen Wall)