30K Letters: Toms River Schools Fight On For Aid Cut Reversal

TOMS RIVER, NJ — Two months ago, the Toms River Regional School District packed 27 school buses with students, staff and community members to and drove out to Trenton to protest cuts to the state aid.

On Tuesday morning, they are packing buses again and joining what is anticipated to be an even larger crowd calling on state lawmakers to suspend state aid cuts that are expected to cost jobs and programs this year, with deeper cuts to come if the aid reductions continue.

Those cuts for the 2019-2020 school year will be detailed more closely Tuesday night (tonight) April 30 at 7 o'clock at Toms River High School North.

A news conference has been called for 9 a.m. Tuesday in the courtyard at the Statehouse Annex, followed by a rally until the state Senate budget hearing begins at 10:30 a.m. Thousands of students and staff from districts that are part of the 75-member SOS coalition — Support Our Students — are expected to be on hand to again put faces on whom the state is hurting with the cuts.

Later, Toms River officials plan to deliver more than 30,000 letters from the district, so state leaders can hear directly about the impacts of the state aid cuts to Toms River.

Some of the letters are from the district's nearly 16,000 students and its 2,700 staff members, but many more are from parents, grandparents and residents. All of them have a similar message: that the state aid cuts imposed under S2 will have devastating effects on the district.

Toms River Regional Schools are scheduled to lose $2.8 million in state aid for the 2019-2020 school year under the current state budget proposal. It's a cut that, combined with the need to restore critical maintenance reserves tapped to fill the last-minute $2.3 million budget hole created by the cut in aid in 2018-19, means significant cuts: 80 staff positions, assistant coaches for sports teams throughout the district.

Toms District officials had hoped to deliver them two weeks ago, before spring break, at the then-scheduled state Senate Budget and Appropriations hearing. The letter-writing campaign was inspired by the Christmas movie "Miracle on 34th Street," where thousands of "Dear Santa" letters are delivered to the courthouse to back up the claim that Kris Kringle was the one and only Santa Claus.

Superintendent David Healy and Toms River Board of Education president Joe Nardini sat with the letters piled before them at the April 18 Toms River school board meeting, and praised the efforts of so many in the district who have continued to fight the cuts.

One letter from a student that was read at the meeting expressed concerns about whether they will have sports programs when they get to high school. Among the cuts in the 2019-2020 budget are assistant coaches; those coaches provide supervision that helps with managing the teams. A letter from a teacher shared her concern about whether she will have a job after this school year. She is a Toms River schools' graduate, bought a house with her fiance in Toms River to raise their future children here, and because she is not yet tenured, she could find herself without work, if her position is among the 80 positions expected to be eliminated.

"These cuts have faces," Healy said at the board meeting, which has been a rallying cry of sorts over the last few months. Students have spoken in Trenton, as have Toms River parents and board members.

The goal is to get Gov. Phil Murphy, Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Lamont Repollet, the head of the state Department of Education, to listen and see the damage being done to school districts that believed they were being fiscally responsible, many of which are now being told they must increase their tax levy because they are not carrying their local fair share of the property tax burden.

The district continues to be a party to a lawsuit brought by eight districts over the state funding formula, which the state Department of Education has refused to release despite the fact that it's used to determine who is getting taxpayer money and how much.

And the voices of the SOS coalition have garnered more support: the New Jersey Education Association has joined with a number of groups in backing the SOS coalition's call to halt implementation of the cuts laid out under S2 to allow for a more thorough examination of the funding issues. SOS, along with the state PTA, the NJEA, the New Jersey School Boards Assocation, the New Jersey Association of School Administrators, New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association, the New Jersey Public Schools Association and the New Jersey Association of School Business Officials issued a joint letter urging the state Legislature to take another look at the problems S2 is creating.

"Since the 2008 passage of the School Funding Reform Act (SFRA), New Jersey has had a court-approved and constitutionally sound public-school funding law" that is designed to ensure all public school districts are funded fairly and fully, the letter reads.

Since SFRA’s passage, however, the state has consistently failed to live up to the promise it made to students and communities when that formula was adopted. As a result, a significant investment of new resources is needed to restore fairness and support all public-school students as our constitution demands."

"This coalition appreciates the addition of formula aid proposed in this year’s budget, which will benefit the majority of the state’s school districts. This is a critical part of the effort to adjust aid allocations for growth and changes in economic factors after nearly a decade of flat funding." the letter says. "It is long overdue and will help persistently under-funded school districts. These funding increases are sacred and must be untouched."

"However, we are concerned that the process of fixing this longstanding problem threatens to harm some students even as it provides urgently needed support to others. We are joining together to seek a fair, sustainable path forward," the letter continues. "In doing so, we pledge not to pit student against student or community against community, but rather to work together for full, fair funding that treats every student as a precious resource worthy of our best effort and investment."

The letter urges a review of the School Funding Reform Act "to ensure that our decade-old law continues to meet the needs of students and that all communities are able, with the state’s financial assistance, to adequately educate their children."

Attorney Fred Gailey was successful in swaying the judge with the thousands of letters being delivered to Kris Kringle, aka Santa Claus, at the courthouse.

Toms River officials are hoping their mountain of letters will sway the judges in the legislature, and their own Miracle on State Street.

(If you've never seen the clip from "Miracle on 34th Street," here you go.)

Note: This article has been updated to correct the number of staff in the Toms River Regional School District.

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