Brick Schools budget would cut 34 teachers, increase already large class sizes

BRICK — School officials are poised to eliminate the jobs of 34 teachers and 30 support staff in order to balance Brick Township Public School's $160.3 million budget for the 2023-24 academic year.

District leaders are faced with closing a budget hole that is just the latest to result from years of shrinking state aid. The cuts, district officials said, have left Brick schools with crowded classrooms and teachers who are forced to increasingly "do more with less," Superintendent Thomas Farrell said Thursday night during a budget hearing with the school board.

Brick officials said state aid will drop 15% in the 2023-24 school year, despite growing numbers of English language learners and rising costs for special education programs and transportation.

"The annual expenditures increase yearly by approximately $5 million just in salaries and benefits, which is more than 80% of our budget," Farrell said. As a result of the state aid cuts, "we started this budget process… with shortfall almost $7 million."

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State financial support dropped from $35.6 million in the 2018-19 school year down to $18.1 million in the current school year, according to the superintendent.

Some relief was announced a few weeks ago, when Trenton officials gave their support to an effort by Sen. Vin Gopal to restore about 66% of the cut funding to Brick and other districts that have seen their state aid slashed. Prior to the announcement, Brick school officials were considering cutting about 86 positions to balance the budget.

The bill restored nearly $1.7 million back to Brick schools, but inflation and escalating costs outside of the district's control mean job cuts still lie ahead, according to school leaders.

"This is not a budget I am proud of," said Farrell. "We've cut positions once again. We continue to reduce staff in order to balance our budget, due to a lack of state funding. And consequently, student services diminish."

Already, some elementary school classrooms are at 30 students, according to Brick officials.

"The past few years have been incredibly challenging, with the financial costs we continue to suffer under (the state funding formula known as) S2," Brick school board President Stephanie Wohlrab said during Thursday's budget hearing.

The S2 formula went into effect in 2018 and aimed to redistribute state aid to some of New Jersey's fastest growing and neediest school districts. However, some of the larger, suburban districts — Brick, Toms River, Jackson, Freehold Regional High School District, among others — saw their aid from Trenton decline year over year.

Those districts were simultaneously hampered from raising local taxes to offset the cuts, due to a state-mandated 2% cap on tax levy increases.

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As a result, Brick officials eliminated more than 250 positions (17% of district staff) in schools since 2018, Farrell said.

For comparison, "our enrollment over that same time period only went down 3.7%," he said.

Assemblyman John Catalano of New Jersey's 10th Legislative District, which includes Brick, addressed the school board at its Thursday night meeting and said he was cosponsoring a bill known as the "Fully Funding Schools and Cutting Property Taxes Act" that would restore millions in funding to Brick and school districts like it.

S2 "is probably the worst legislation in the world," he told the school board.

Catalano said the bill, if passed, would send more than $35 million in state funding back to Brick schools.

The bill would "more than cover everything we've lost, bring us to (educational) adequacy and start us on the right road to humanity," the assemblyman said.

Schools Business Administrator James Edwards said without an overhaul of the current state funding formula, Brick schools will face another estimated $6 million budget shortfall next year. That loss could mean another 50 jobs eliminated within the district, he said.

Nearby: Selling land to Toms River could help school district close budget gap

Amanda Oglesby is an Ocean County native who covers Brick, Barnegat and Lacey townships as well as the environment. She has worked for the Press for more than a decade. Reach her at @OglesbyAPP, aoglesby@gannettnj.com or 732-557-5701.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: State funding for Brick Schools to drop 15%, budget cuts needed