Wayne Full-Day Kindergarten Brings With It Budget Cuts

WAYNE, NJ - Cuts are coming to the Wayne Public School District in the 2016-17 academic year, the result of the Board of Education voting to implement full-day kindergarten beginning in September.

Residents voted full-day kindergarten down in November 5,048 to 4,455. If approved, the program would have raised the average resident’s school taxes by an average of $47 to raise the $2.1 million needed to implement the program. Now, that money has to found elsewhere. Wayne is the only K-12 school district in Passaic County that doesn’t have full-day kindergarten.

“Nobody is arguing that having full-day kindergarten is a bad thing for the district, no one’s disputing that,” said Superintendent Mark Toback. “But there is a financial issue. In the financing era that we live in, there’s no way to bring it to the district without cutting places.”

The Board of Education voted 6-2 recently in favor of funding the program. Now comes the task of figuring out how to allocate the necessary money for the program and stay under the state-mandated 2 percent annual budget increase.

If the budget’s tax levy increases by more than 2 percent, residents will vote on whether to approve the tax levy or not, something they have not done since 2011. The Board of Education, along with many others in New Jersey, decided to move the annual school district election to November, which took away the public’s ability to vote on the tax levy.

“The money would have been there if the measure was approved in November,” Toback said.

The district could raise money outside of the 2-percent cap by using its banked cap, which is budgeted money the district did not spend below the cap in previous years. The district might also be eligible for waivers to exceed the cap because of the steep increase in health insurance costs.

Breakage could also give the district some fiscal breathing room, but the exact amount, if any, is unknown. Breakage occurs when a teacher making a high salary retires or leaves the district and is replaced by a lower-earning teacher. The amount is never the same year to year, however.