Job Cuts Coming As Brick Schools Cope With $2.5M State Aid Loss

BRICK, NJ — The Brick Township School District is bracing for job cuts as it absorbs another reduction in funding from the state Department of Education, a situation that will increase class sizes and result in a loss of programs, district officials said.

The education department released state aid figures last week showing the district is set to receive $14,632,033 in aid for 2023-24, a reduction of $2,542,260.

The cut, 14.8 percent, is part of the ongoing cuts under S2, the law signed in 2018 that initiated cuts in so-called "adjustment aid" that districts were receiving under the 2008 School Funding Reform Act.

"For this upcoming budget cycle we anticipate cutting jobs so as to balance our budget," Superintendent Thomas Farrell said, reiterating remarks he made at the February board of education meeting. "Thus, class sizes will increase and many other support services and programs could be reduced."

"The reduction in aid is what was expected due to the continued loss of state aid via the S2 legislation," said Jim Edwards, the district's business administrator. "The loss will continue to negatively impact the Brick schools and provide challenges for maintaining educational programs."

Farrell in February said the hope is retirements and attrition will limit the number of people who are laid off, but will result in transfers as teachers and staff are moved around to match certifications with needs.

It also means that non-tenured teachers who the district has invested time and energy in training will likely be scooped up by districts that aren't facing staff cuts, because districts across New Jersey have struggled to find enough teachers to fill openings.

"With every cut we are doing our best to minimize the impact on our students and our staff," Farrell said in February. "We're grateful for all of our staff contributions."

The combination of the aid cuts and the 2 percent cap, which was instituted when inflation was 1.5 percent, "is the perfect storm and we need the state's help," Farrell said.

But Brick and dozens of districts subject to the S2 cuts are faced with the fact that they cannot fill the budget hole.

To exceed the 2 percent cap, school districts have to put the budget to a public vote. But it cannot be done through a special election, meaning it would take place in November — more than three months into the fiscal year and two months into the educational year, after all the cuts have been made.

In Brick, the district also is "under adequacy," meaning it is not spending the amount of money per student that the state Department of Education says is necessary to provide a "thorough and efficient" education as required under the New Jersey Constitution.

Brick is $17 million under adequacy currently, Farrell said, at the same time the state has projected the district's local fair share — what the state says it should be contributing through property taxes to fund its schools — at $165 million.

That local fair share is $3 million more than the district's entire $162 million budget for 2022-23, and more than $46 million above the 2022-23 property tax levy of $118,333,977.

Edwards has repeatedly said that under the 2 percent cap, if there were no changes in the local fair share and no additional cuts, it would take more than a dozen years for Brick to close that gap in the local fair share.

That local fair share is determined by a formula that has been the subject of litigation since early 2019. Brick Township filed a lawsuit, joined by seven other school districts, including Toms River, Jackson and the Freehold Regional High School District in Monmouth County, over the state Department of Education's refusal to provide the formula in response to an Open Public Records Act request.

The Department of Education was ordered to turn over the information and in January 2021, turned over the coding for the formula. However, it has refused to provide the data needed to run the formula — necessary to see if the local fair share numbers the state is providing are accurate.

In a Nov. 9, 2022 letter to the Weiner Law Group, the attorneys handling the OPRA lawsuit, state Attorney General Matthew Platkin said the education department cannot provide that data "because the data files located in the WORKSPACE folder that are used by the SAS program that performs the calculations called for are temporary, and cease to exist when the SAS session ends."

In short, the numbers they use disappear as soon as they are through calculating the local fair share, the education department claims.

The cuts come as Gov. Phil Murphy touted a $1 billion increase in school funding across the state, and boasts about a $10 billion surplus that has resulted at least in part from federal funding New Jersey received during the pandemic.

"A short-term solution is for the State to utilize some of the unspent billions in federal dollars received and in reserve, and re-allocate monies to those districts negatively affected by S2 and that are way below adequacy," Farrell said. He also urged state officials to look again at the adequacy aid and how it is distributed, "and possibly repurpose that money based on changes in school aid funding over the last few years."

"A long-term solution is that the state must re-evaluate the school funding formula so as to provide a thorough and efficient education for all students in New Jersey by striving to bring all public school districts to adequacy — the state’s base threshold established for a constitutional 'T&E' education for students," Farrell said.

The next school board meeting is set for 7 p.m. March 16 at the district's Professional Development Center, 101 Hendrickson Blvd.

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