'Fiscal Apocalypse': Toms River Schools Grapple With $14.4M Aid Cut

TOMS RIVER, NJ — The Toms River Regional Board of Education will be discussing the impact of the $14.4 million cut in state funding when board holds its committee meetings Wednesday evening.

The meetings, which begin at 6 p.m. March 8 will be held in the administration building at 1144 Hooper Ave. Members of the public will be able to watch the meetings via live stream on the district's YouTube channel.

The meetings — Budget & Finance, Curriculum, Buildings & Grounds / Building & Grounds Referendum & ESIP, and Policy Committee — are scheduled to run back-to-back from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., with the public able to comment by telephone at the end of the committee meetings. The phone number to call in will be displayed and announced on the livestream.

The committee meeting agendas can be found here. In addition to the budget discussion, the board is scheduled to review a Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying policy update during the policy committee.

The financial challenges of the $14.4 million cut, the ongoing impact of S2, are likely to draw the most attention.

In an emailed statement on Friday, Superintendent Michael Citta said the district was "trying to quantify the irreversible damage these cuts will do to our kids in our beloved school community."

"Our initial calculation had a worst-case scenario of $2.8 million in aid reduction which, in our planning, was impossible to endure and move forward. So you can imagine our reaction yesterday when we learned of the $14.4 million cut, which was, essentially, 'This must be a mistake,' " he said.

"Rest assured, however, that no stone will be left unturned as we work to resolve what is quite honestly a monumentally unrealistic reduction," Citta said.

William Doering, the district's business administrator, has from the beginning of the cuts warned that the Toms River schools would face a fiscal cliff if the cuts were not reversed.

"This isn’t a fiscal cliff; this is a fiscal apocalypse," Citta said in his emailed statement.

S2 was signed into law in 2018 under the premise that it was going to eliminate so-called "adjustment aid" that some districts were receiving under the 2008 School Funding Reform Act. It was set to make the cuts over seven years, with Toms River slated to lose $19,773,568 over the course of the seven years, according to calculations by the Education Law Center, a watchdog organization that monitors public education issues in New Jersey and other states.

Including the $14.4 million cut for 2023-24, the Department of Education has cut the state funding to the Toms River Regional district by $37 million since 2018-19, nearly double the aid cut predicted by the Education Law Center. It is a 55 percent cut from the $68 million in state funding the district was receiving.

Since S2 went into effect for the 2018-19 budget, the Toms River Regional district has eliminated 186 positions, including 142 teaching positions. In addition, 90 teaching positions are being funded through grants received because of the pandemic under the ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) and American Rescue Plan funds.

While the state has been cutting Toms River's funding, its local fair share — the amount the state Department of Education says it should be funding through its property tax levy — has risen significantly.

Toms River Regional's local fair share for 2023-24 is $250,875,466 according to the state Department of Education, more than $20 million above its general fund budget of $229 million for 2022-23, and more than $75 million more than the district's projected tax levy for 2023-24, which Doering said is estimated at $175,795,831.

The district also is "under adequacy," meaning it is not spending the amount 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.

Toms River is nearly $64 million under adequacy, according to the state Department of Education's calculations.

The local fair share is determined by a formula that has been the subject of litigation since early 2019. The Toms River schools joined a lawsuit filed by the Brick Township schools 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 provide 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 Toms River Regional district is required, under S2, to raise its property tax levy yearly because it is under adequacy. But property tax levy increases are capped at 2 percent under state law.

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.

To close the gap on adequacy would take the district 19 years under the 2 percent cap, Doering said, and that is only if the local fair share does not rise and the district does not suffer any additional aid cuts.

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.

They also come as schools across the state fight to address academic deficits that resulted for thousands of students who struggled with remote learning during the pandemic shutdowns.

A 2 percent increase in the property tax levy won't come close to filling the gap created by the $14.4 million aid cut — which equals almost $1,000 per student in the Toms River schools, and is the highest cut, percentage-wise, of districts that receive $10 million or more in state aid.

Finding enough revenue seems unlikely. Dana Tormollan, a member of the Toms River Education Foundation, which has been raising money to fund items such as sports equipment and items for the marching bands, urged Toms River officials to help in any way possible.

"We can't raise $14 million," she said at the Township Council meeting Tuesday night. "Everyone needs to come together to fight this."

Toms River Township officials criticized the cuts and said it appears Toms River is being targeted by the Murphy administration, because of the school funding cuts but also because of the state Department of Environmental Protection's proposed settlement with BASF on the Ciba-Geigy property, and because of the state's refusal to help with the costs of the comping beach replenishment project by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

"We get nothing from the state," Toms River Mayor Maurice "Mo" Hill said.

New Jersey's 10th District legislators, Sen. Jim Holzapfel and Assemblymen Greg McGuckin and John Catalano have assailed the cuts.

"Increased funding for schools shouldn’t come at the expense of other children’s education," McGuckin said last week. "All children deserve a thorough and efficient education, but Murphy’s budget and funding formula picks winners and losers.

"Hundreds of millions of dollars have been taken from Ocean County school districts to increase funding in Democrat districts. If Murphy really wants to address the learning loss all students experienced from his draconian lockdowns, he has to fully fund all schools," McGuckin said.