Toms River, Brick Seek 'Secret' Math Equation In School Aid Fight

TOMS RIVER, NJ — As school officials in Toms River and Brick continue to raise the alarm about devastating school aid cuts, the focus has become increasingly on central issue: A mathematical equation.

The equation — a formula — is used to determine what the state believes a school district’s residents should be paying to support the education of their students — and in turn, how much aid they should be receiving from the state of New Jersey.

That formula, which is being used to cut millions in aid from the Toms River Regional and Brick school districts, however, is secret.

The state Department of Education has refused to release the formula. It’s been requested multiple times, by the Toms River Regional School District, Brick Township Schools, Jackson Township Schools, and the Freehold Regional High School District, among others. The state school administrators’ association has asked for it. All have been denied.

"They told us it was 'proprietary,' " said William Doering, the Toms River schools’ business administrator, when the district requested it through the Open Public Records Act. (The rejected OPRA request is at the bottom of this article.)

A Patch OPRA request in March for the formula was met with a rejection as well. “You requested information, not a record,” was reply from the state Department of Education.

"We asked for a copy of the contract for the vendor who developed it (the formula) and they (the state Department of Education) said, no, we developed it," said James Edwards, business administrator for the Brick Township School District.

The formula, however, is used to determine how the equalization aid, which amounts to $6.5 billion — about 17 percent of the state’s budget — is spent.

It’s the subject of the lawsuit by Toms River, Brick and several other districts against the state education department. It is an issue that mystifies not just district officials but the public at large.

"If we ever presented a budget to the community of Toms River Regional and said, ‘By the way, we're not going to divulge how we're going to spend $40 million of your money,’ would you take exception to that?" Doering said to the audience at the Toms River Regional Board of Education meeting in November. "I would sure as heck hope so, because that's exactly what is happening here."

Doering and Toms River Superintendent David Healy have been highlighting the issues with the formula for more than four years in the battle over S2, the law pushed by state Senate President Stephen Sweeney to eliminate so-called adjustment aid that was part of the 2008 School Funding Reform Act.

Sweeney’s argument has been that districts receiving the adjustment aid are receiving support for students no longer in their districts, and that the aid was meant to be temporary. But equalization aid, of which the adjustment aid is part, isn’t a set per-student amount. The equalization aid is based on the state's so-far secret formula that looks at property values and income.

Under the formula that the Department of Education refuses to reveal, Toms River’s property value multiplier has risen by 48 percent since 2008. That’s despite the $2 billion in ratables that were destroyed by Superstorm Sandy in 2012, of which more than $500 million still have not returned to the tax rolls, Doering has said.

"It’s the same here in Brick," said Edwards, referring to the millions in ratables Brick lost in Sandy. More than $300 million have yet to return the tax rolls in that town. "When you think property values should have gone down, they went up."

At the same time that the property value multiplier skyrocketed in Toms River, the income multiplier for Toms River has risen just 1.5 percent, Doering said. "The multipliers make no sense."

Sweeney, in a recent talk before the New Jersey School Boards Association Delegate Assembly, told school board members from around the state that he believes the formula is right.

"You say it’s wrong," he said, addressing comments from a Toms River school board member. "I think it’s right."

It is that formula that’s being used as the basis for cutting millions in aid from Toms River, Brick and more than 100 school districts around the state. For the 2020-2021 school year, that aid cut amounts to $4.3 million for Toms River, and $4.2 million for Brick. The cuts are forcing painful conversations, both privately within the districts and publicly.

In Toms River, the possibilities for cuts include sports programs, clubs, drama, band, and even the district’s full-day kindergarten. In Brick, officials have not publicly discussed potential cuts, but Board of Education president Stephanie Wohlrab has said, "everything is on the table."

The talk of cutting sports and clubs has gotten the attention of parents in Toms River. They have flooded social media with questions and criticisms. Some have urged the district to consider pay-to-play arrangements to keep programs, particularly sports, operating.

In Brick, parents have been nervously discussing the possibility that students will be moved to other schools in the district, raising those questions at school board meetings. Brick officials have not confirmed any possibilities.

While other school districts have closed schools and sold off buildings, those solutions are stop-gap at best and ignore the bigger picture, officials in both Toms River and Brick have said.

That bigger picture: crippling cuts to staffing and severe classroom impacts, with upward of 40 students to a classroom.

The Toms River budget for sports and other co-curriculars — the theatre programs at the three high schools, the marching bands, the Key Clubs, the Spanish Clubs, the robotics clubs and so much more, all of which lead to a more well-rounded education — is $3.8 million. Whether those programs are saved this year or cut is only part of the bigger, ongoing trauma the district is facing. Doering said the cut will be $7 million for the 2021-2022 school year.

There will be nothing left to cut but staff at that point, because staffing and salaries make up the bulk of budgets in the school districts.

"If we sell a school, that only helps for about half a year," Doering said at the November school board meeting. Selling a school isn't a solution that's being considered, because enrollments have not fallen enough to warrant it — despite persistent rumors otherwise, Healy has said.

Brick is in similar, dire straits, Edwards said, in part because of the state's 2 percent cap on tax levy increases.

"Even if we raise the property tax levy by the full 2 percent, it doesn’t come close to making up for the cut," Edwards has said repeatedly at Brick school board meetings. "If we (in Brick) had been raising the property tax levy by 2 percent per year since 2010, we still would be below what the state says we should be spending."

Sweeney recently proposed offering waivers to allow districts to exceed the state’s 2 percent cap on tax levy increases.

But Doering and Edwards say that isn't a real solution and more importantly, it still doesn’t answer the question of how the state is coming to its conclusions about the local fair share.

Edwards said he and Doering sat down with education department officials earlier this year — one of many times they've traveled to Trenton to discuss the aid cuts and the impact on the districts — and Doering showed them how he calculated the local fair share amounts and funding based on information in the 2008 School Funding Reform Act.

"They wouldn’t even look at it," Edwards said.

Instead, Sweeney continues to insist the formula is accurate and that Toms River and Brick — and more than 100 others — are overfunded.

In a letter to new school board members around the state, Sweeney touted the cuts being made to those districts, insisting he is committed to making sure every district "receives the full funding it is entitled to."

But so far, he has not budged on seeing to it that the funding formula is released.

Toms River parents and taxpayers at the November school board meeting questioned how it is possible that the state will not share how it is coming up with its funding amounts.

"There’s no way that (information about how) taxpayer money that comes from the state that goes to the schools should be held from the public,” Charles Caruso, a Toms River resident, said at the Toms River school board meeting in November. “I don't see how that can be proprietary. There's no way our money, my money should be spent without us knowing how it’s spent.”

It’s the secrecy — the same kind of secrecy that government bodies get criticized for all the time — that so many find infuriating.

"As a board of education member, my community would not accept that from me," Wohlrab, the Brick school board president, said. "So why is it acceptable from the state? If a member of my community sued (the Brick schools) for that information they’d win."

"If they showed us the formula and truly showed it was correct, we’d have to go away," Edwards said. "They haven’t done that. Instead, they’ve refused to release it."

"It makes you wonder," he said.

You can hear Doering explain the issues with the funding formula, about 1 hour into the Nov. 20 Toms River school board meeting, below:

NJ Department of Education Answer to Toms River Regional School District OPRA On School Funding Formula by Karen Wall on Scribd

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