Politics & Government
Collingswood Schools Net $32K in State Aid; Refund Likely
It's not much in per-household terms, says Superintendent Scott Oswald, but it's a few dollars in the right direction.
The Collingswood school district will receive nearly $33,000 in additional state aid for the 2012-13 school year. That amount is likely to end up back in the pockets of borough residents, believes Superintendent Scott Oswald.
“We were anticipating flat [gains],” Oswald said, “and I would suspect that while it’s ultimately up to the board to approve the budget, we’re looking at a little bit of tax relief.”
The only remaining variable that could thwart a refund, he said, is the amount of rateables from the community.
Find out what's happening in Collingswoodfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
“We don’t have that number yet,” Oswald said. “If everything else were equal and the rateables come in exactly as they were last year, there should be a tax decrease.”
, an across-the-board uptick of about 1.5 to 2 percent per district, on average.
Although base aid to Collingswood schools was actually allocated at $73,752, the state assessed $40,903 in debt for a net increase of $32,859.
Find out what's happening in Collingswoodfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Collingswood received a modest, 0.3 percent net increase because its student population has remained nearly identical to 2011-12 levels, Oswald said.
“The fact that we got such a little percentage [gain] indicates that the money may have gone someplace else, and that seems fair to me,” he said.
“There are districts further south that are up hundreds of kids and haven’t gotten an increase in state aid [in a while]. The burden of staffing their schools has really fallen 100 percent on the taxpayers.”
Oswald said that any refund will be slight, but “even if it’s a few dollars, it’s not a few dollars in the up direction.
“Any time we don’t see a decrease, we’re pretty happy,” he said, adding that the district had budgeted for some tax relief even with a flat aid package.
Oswald also pointed out that the district works to trim costs by sharing custodial services with the Oaklyn and Woodlynne school districts and technology services with those in Oaklyn and Bellmawr.
“We’ve gotten a lot of that and it’s starting to pay off for us,” Oswald said. “Hopefully next year we will be sharing some child study team services with Woodlynne.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that the Collingswood School District could be sharing child study team services with the Oaklyn school district.
