Videos: Toms River Schools' Citizens Budget Advisory Meeting

TOMS RIVER, NJ — The Toms River Regional School District is in the process of finalizing the 2019-2020 school budget, which must be submitted to the Ocean County executive superintendent and the state Department of Education for approval.

The district is continuing to fight the state aid cuts mandated under S2, the amendment to the School Funding Reform Act that was championed by state Senate President Stephen Sweeney. Those aid cuts will cost the Toms River schools cumulatively $83 million over the course of the six-year plan.

The cuts put in place under S2, Sweeney says, are aimed at districts that are receiving more than their fair share of state aid and are failing to pay their fair share of property taxes to support their schools. A third of the districts across New Jersey are seeing cuts, with the ones to Toms River among the most significant.

The district is fighting the cuts on multiple fronts: first, through its participation in SOS, the Support Our Students, Save Our Schools coalition, which includes 74 school districts across the state that are being hurt by the cuts; second, through its participation in a lawsuit against the state Department of Education that says the distribution of state aid is arbitrary and capricious and results in a violation of the state constitution's requirement to provide a thorough and efficient education.

The third piece has been a very active and public campaign across social media, district communications, in-person visits and word-of-mouth commentary directed at Sweeney, Gov. Phil Murphy, Dr. Lamont Repollet, the head of the Department of Education, and other state legislators pressing the message of how devastating the state aid cuts will be to the students and the community as a whole.

That, of course, included a March rally at the Statehouse in Trenton where Toms River sent 27 buses of students and staff members and were joined by hundreds of representatives from other districts for a 4,000-person turnout. It also has included appearances by Superintendent David Healy and Business Administrator William Doering at the Senate and Assembly budget hearings, multiple meetings with legislators that are ongoing.

In the meantime, however, the district has been preparing the budget 2019-2020 budget, which includes a $2.78 million aid cut on top of the need to replace maintenance reserves that were decimated last year to make up for the $2.3 million cut dropped on the district after the school year started. On March 27, the district administration gave a public presentation at the Citizens Budget Advisory meeting that gave a first real look at what those cuts mean.

The Board of Education is scheduled to hold a final public budget hearing at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 30, in the auditorium at Toms River High School North. If you were unable to attend the Citizens Budget Advisory Committee meeting, you can watch the videos (three parts, total of about 3-1/2 hours) from the meeting below.

The full Power Point presentation that accompanied the meeting can be found by clicking here.

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