Toms River Schools To March On Trenton Over State Aid Cuts

TOMS RIVER, NJ — "The day of reckoning is now." Toms River Superintendent David Healy made the statement Wednesday night, a tone of resignation and urgency in his voice, as he stressed the dire situation the Toms River Regional School District faces due to state aid cuts.

A $5 million cut in state aid for the 2019-2020 school year is pending, thanks to S2, the legislation signed into law last summer. Staffing cuts, estimated at 80 positions, are on the horizon, and jobs will be lost, Healy told the school board during its committee meetings.

"We're going to look at every position in the district and see where the need is," Healy said. "We've been doing that for a while now in every area."

The cuts will cumulatively take $80 million from the district over six years.

Toms River school district officials are not simply accepting the financial punishment being dished out by the state, however: The district is part of a coalition that is planning a rally March 5 at the Statehouse over the cuts.

Residents of Toms River, Beachwood, South Toms River and Pine Beach are encouraged to participate, and the district will be sending buses to Trenton for participants. You can sign up by clicking here. More than 70 districts that are losing aid under S2 are members of the coalition, named Support Our Students, and many of them are planning to send buses as well, official said.

"On March 5, 2019, we are traveling to Trenton to rally at the Statehouse, and we have one goal: to get our money back," a flier about the rally being distributed by the district says. March 5 also is the day Gov. Phil Murphy is scheduled to deliver his state budget address.

In addition to participating in Support Our Schools, which is reaching out to legislators to fight the mandates under S2, Toms River also is one of nine suing the state Department of Education over the way it distributes aid to schools across state.

Under S2, the so-called adjustment aid is being taken away from districts the state says are "overfunded" and that money is being moved to districts that are "underfunded." The law, pushed by Senate President Stephen Sweeney and signed by Gov. Phil Murphy, also mandates that districts that are "under adequacy" — meaning they don't spend as much as the state says they should be spending to educate students — must also increase their property tax levy by the state cap maximum of 2 percent.

The assertion by Sweeney has been that district whose aid is being cut are not paying their fair share of property taxes.

"The formula they are using to distinguish between 'over-' and 'under-'funded schools is critically flawed," Healy said in a letter to the community that was released this week. "(The formula) does not factor billions of dollars in Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOTs); the property wealth figures it relies on include (more than ) 25 towns that have not had legally-required property revaluations in more than 25 years; and the calculations are impossible to verify without the state disclosing how it allocates $6.3 billion in equalization aid."

There is a formula the state Department of Education has refused to share the formula it uses, which is part of the reason behind the lawsuit, officials have said.

"Make no mistake: our district will be nothing short of gutted and fully decimated if something does not change with regards to the allocation of school aid," Healy said in the letter.

Healy and William Doering, the Toms River schools' business administrator, have repeatedly said Toms River, the fifth largest district in the state with about 16,000 students is functioning at more than $30 million under adequacy — meaning the district is spending $30 million less than the state says should be spent for a "thorough and efficient education" as defined by state law. Toms River has an enrollment of about 16,000 students and has the second-lowest per-pupil costs in the state.

"Our larger goal is a revision of the funding formula that would provide equitable distribution of state funding to ALL school districts, not just ours," Healy said.

While for years the district has been able to find a way to make things, the district has reached a point where there is no longer any wiggle room, the letter said. "The harsh truth is that—although we’re clearly doing everything we can—this is out of our control. These cuts have already been imposed. We are already at the place many have assumed we’d wouldn’t reach, and if things remain the same, we will lose much, including jobs."

"This fight requires each and every one of you, all 110,000+ residents and 76,500+ registered voters in the greater Toms River area. The good news is that there is strength in numbers, and Toms River certainly has the numbers to make a difference and restore this funding for our students, staff, and community," Healy's letter said.

Joe Nardini, the school board president, has written to all of the town officials urging them to get involved as well.

"We need every citizen in our great towns to get out and make their disapproval known to the state," Nardini wrote.

You can read the letters below. Also below is the flier that is being distributed.

Click here to get Patch email notifications on this or other local news articles or get Patch breaking news alerts sent right to your phone with our app. Download here.

Have a news tip? Email karen.wall@patch.com

Follow Toms River Patch on Facebook Image via Shutterstock