Toms River Schools May See $1.2M State Aid Bump For 2018-19

TOMS RIVER, NJ — The Toms River Regional School District would receive an increase of more than $1.2 million in state aid under the 2018-19 budget proposed by Gov. Phil Murphy.

Overall, state aid to schools would increase 3.5 percent under a budget that still must be approved by the state Legislature.

Toms River would receive $68,224,666, an increase of $1,249,272 over last year, according to the figures released by the Murphy administration this week, the first increase in state aid to the district in years.

But whether that increase will actually happen is anyone's guess.

Last year, district officials were told Toms River would receive $66,975,394 in state aid, and Superintendent David Healy and Business Administrator William Doering finalized the district's budget with that in mind. But just days before the new fiscal year was to begin, a last-minute budget deal between Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Steve Sweeney and then-Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto to increase state aid, with the goal of helping districts in severe need, stripped $3.3 million from Toms River.

Healy and Doering, along with local legislators and with support from other affected districts, including Brick Township, publicly decried the $3.3 million cut. Plans to bus parents to Trenton to protest the cuts were blocked by State Police, but the outcry led to a reduction in the initial planned cut.

The battleground was over adjustment aid, which was funding included years ago for districts that would have been decimated when the current state education funding formula went into place. Sweeney, a Democrat, targeted that funding to push more aid to schools in his legislative district, implying the districts seeing adjustment aid cuts were rich districts that didn't need it. However, some of the deepest cuts under Sweeney's proposal last year were to districts in Republican areas, and several of them were Shore towns that had been hit hard by Superstorm Sandy.

Toms River took one of the biggest hits, percentage-wise, under the Sweeney cut.

When the state budget was finally signed by Christie in the wee hours of July 3, following a firestorm of criticism over the famous photos of the governor sitting on the beach at Island Beach State Park while the state park was closed to everyone else, Toms River was still left with a nearly $1.4 million cut that the district had to fill with surplus.

Healy and Doering had to fight for three more months to get the $1.4 million restored by the Department of Education.

A bump in state aid this year would be important as the district continues to wrestle with a massive list of facilities needs.

A referendum is anticipated to take place later this year but how much the district will ask voters to consider spending is not settled. The complete list of needs that range from security upgrades to removing 1970s-installed carpeting in some schools to addressing Americans with Disabilities Act access issues totals roughly $160 million.

Of that, $17 million in upgrades would be addressed through an Energy Savings Improvement Program, which allows public entities to pay for capital upgrades with the energy cost savings generated by installing energy conservation measures without any tax increase to the public.

The district has been holding meetings in all of the schools over the last month to allow parents and residents to ask questions about the possible referendum and about what is planned for each school. The final four meetings are set for March 22 and March 27.

The Board of Education meets March 21 at 7:30 p.m. in the auditorium at Toms River High School North.

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