Hopatcong School Heads Thrilled Over Added State Cash

Margaret Bongiorno almost ran out of adjectives.

"This is great," the Hopatcong Board of Education member said. "That's fantastic. Just, wow."

Bongiorno was reacting to Gov. Chris Christie's Tuesday announcement that Hopatcong would receive almost $700,000 more from the state for the 2011-2012 school year than it got the previous year.

Christie the district will get an additional $340,601—equal to the amount , giving Hopatcong $681,202 more state aid than in 2010-11. In total, Hopatcong will get $11,866,390 state aid overall in 2011-12 compared to the $11,185,188 it had the previous year.

"It's a game-changer," said Bongiorno, in her first term.

Bongiorno and Board President Cliff Lundin each said the school must consider pumping the money into education and captial improvement projects. Bongiorno said the district was "in dire need of" textbooks and desks.

"We've got to look at educational needs for students," Lundin said. "That has to be primary. We've got to get the most bang for the buck."

Lundin said the district must upgrade its fire detection system to the tune of $170,000. He also said the district needs two new boilers. "We've been scraping together money from other sources," he said.

Bongiorno agreed.

"We have these capital improvement projects looming over our heads that must get done," she said.

Maranzano said he was also surprised by the news.

"It's certainly something that we're very excited about and something that we're happy to embrace," he said. "It sounds like someone is recognizing the difficulties that those severe cuts put on us. This certainly takes us on the path we need to be. It stabilizes a very shaky foundation we were standing on."

Maranzano was referring to the $1.7 million in state aid the school lost in 2010-2011, which, coupled with a $730,000 slash from the borough council when the district's proposed budget was defeated, led to many teacher and program cuts.

And though Hopatcong's 2011-12 budget proposal was narrowly defeated in the spring, the council and school board agreed to cut $250,000 from it and no teachers were cut.

But, Maranzano said, the district would have to read the fine print.

"Whenever the state gives you something, you always have to ask yourself, 'How do they want you to spend it?'" he said.

He continued: "What I'm concerned about is what's in the fine print that we don't yet understand? So we are going to have to look carefully at how that state plans to apply that money. But don't let that undermine the fact this is something we're excited about."