Taxes Go Up About $65 In OK'd 2022-23 Cherry Hill School Budget

CHERRY HILL, NJ — Taxes will go up about $65 for the average Cherry Hill School District taxpayer in the 2022-2023 school year now that the school district's budget for that academic session was passed, a school official said.

The amount is based on a house assessed in the township at $226,400, which equals the average assessed value of homes in Cherry Hill Hill and is "$65.04 over the year," Lynn E. Shugars, the district's superintendent said at the April 26 school board meeting. "Last year our tax impact was around $25 or so, so we have been able to keep it under $100 for the past 2 years, so that's good," she added.

The school district's general fund for 2022-2023 totals $231,615,122, which is an increase of 3.3% from last year, according to Shugars. Approximately 72 percent of that will go to employee salary and benefits and the remaining approximately 28 percent goes to tuition, transportation, books and most all other spending, according to Shugars.

She said some new items in the 2022-2023 school district budget include:

• four additional classes (three elementary, one middle school) to meet the district's autistic support needs (these classes will require four teaching staff members and eight educational assistants, according to Shugars)
• salary and benefits for a high school technology teacher, salary and benefits for a technology specialist and salary and benefits for additional athletic trainer services

The superintendent's office in 2022-2023 also plans to take from its capital reserve account to pay for upgrades to heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems throughout the district ($2 million), make playground updates to the Malberg (formerly Barclay) School, ($600,000) and make repairs/renovations/etc. related to the Americans with Disabilities Act to the Stockton and Lewis (formerly Malberg) School ($1.55 million), Shugars said.

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