Brick School Budget Cuts 50 Positions For 2024-25

BRICK, NJ — The Brick Township School District will have a reduction of nearly 50 positions under the proposed 2024-25 school budget, the result of a nearly $4 million gap that had to be closed, district officials said Thursday night.

The proposed $162.2 million budget includes a 2.99 percent increase in the property tax levy, Superintendent Thomas Farrell said. The district — along with many throughout New Jersey — received a waiver allowing them to exceed the 2 percent cap by .99 percent due to the impact of higher-than-anticipated increases in the cost of health benefits.

The school board failed to pass the budget — the board voted 3 in favor, 3 opposed, with board member Nicole Siebert absent. The board will have to vote again on the budget at its May 9 meeting and if it doesn't pass there, it risks state intervention.

Farrell said the $4 million gap was the result of multiple pressures on the budget, starting with health benefits costs, which increased by $3 million. The district also had to account for the end of the ESSER — Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief — funds grant the district had received as part of the federal support to schools during the coronavirus pandemic.

The district also had its state aid cut again for 2024-25 under what is supposed to be the last year of cuts under the law commonly known as S2. (Read more about S2 at the bottom of this article.)

Fewer staff, higher class sizes

The cuts of 51.5 "full-time equivalent" positions bring to 350 the number of staff positions cut since 2017, when the first round of cuts pushed by state Senate President Steve Sweeney went through. Those cuts were the basis of what became formalized as S2 in 2018.

The 2024-25 cuts include 35 instructional positions — 12 high school teaching positions, 11 middle school and 12 elementary — along with seven basic skills/interventionist positions and eight support staff positions.

The reduction in teaching positions also means class sizes will increase again, with the biggest impact at the elementary school level, where classes will have more than 30 students (up to a high of 38 in fifth grade at Osbornville Elementary.

Farrell said he is hopeful the cuts will be absorbed through retirements and attrition. All new teachers are told up front they face non-renewal after the first year because of the state aid cuts.

"I hate this budget," Farrell said. It is balanced, as the district is required to do under state law, but having to cut positions hurts the students.

The S2 cuts, though smaller in 2024-25, have exacerbated the impact of changes in the demographics of the school district.

While Brick has seen more than $23 million in state aid removed since 2017, it has seen its population of multi-language learners increase from 90 students five years ago to 600 students. There are 18 languages spoken including Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Thai, Creole, with the largest number speaking Spanish, according to Alyce Anderson, the district's director of special services.

In addition, the number of students with individualized education plans (known as IEPs) has grown and the cost of providing those services has risen dramatically — even as the state aid provided to districts for those students has remained unchanged. Farrell said 22 percent of Brick's enrollment is special needs students, from those who are educated in self-contained classrooms to those who need an aide to assist them, but the state only provides funding for 15.9 percent, he said.

Residents speak out

Some residents who spoke at the public meeting wanted the board to revisit some of the cuts.

Marc Vazquez advocated for eliminating vice principals in favor keeping teaching positions. Four of the district's six elementary schools have no assistant principals. The middle schools have two each and the high schools have three each, all of whom assist with disciplinary issues — a problem schools have faced across the country since the coronavirus pandemic. The high schools each have athletic directors who oversee all of the high school sports programs; they also hold assistant principal titles to assist as needed, Farrell said.

Victor Fanelli advocated for cutting courtesy busing, but business administrator James Edwards said that was not an option as the town's residents voted in 2006 to make courtesy busing — provided to high school students who live 1-1/2 miles to 2-1/2 miles from their schools and to elementary students who live 1 to 2 miles from school — a permanent part of the district's budget.

Fanelli also recommended asking the Brick Township MUA for money, citing a $1 million donation it made to Brick's municipal government. Fanelli said Lacey Township's MUA made a donation to the Lacey Township schools, which are facing much deeper cuts for 2024-25.

Another resident asked if there was any consideration for freezing salaries, but Farrell said it would require the district's unions to reopen their contracts and agree to freeze raises that were agreed to in 2023.

NJ has $20 billion in property tax relief

Larry Reid, who served on the Brick school board from 2012-2014, said the arguments and ire should be directed at the state of New Jersey, which he said is sitting on $20 billion in its Property Tax Relief Fund. That fund was created in 1976 with the implementation of the state income tax, and it was solely to provide property tax relief, but is not being used for that purpose, Reid said.

Under S2, the education department has said Brick Township's "local fair share" — the amount of property taxes it says the township should be raising from its residents to pay for its schools —is $182 million, nearly $60 million more than the district's proposed tax levy for 2024-25 and $20 million more than its entire 2024-25 budget.

Brick also is currently $27 million under adequacy, according to the state Department of Education, which defines how much a district needs to spend to provide a thorough-and-efficient education.

The money in New Jersey's Property Tax Relief Fund could easily fix that issue for Brick and other districts in the same situation from S2.

History of S2

S2 was the result of years of pressure from residents in districts that had not received full school funding in years. Under the School Funding Reform Act of 2008, which replaced the former funding setup that was supposed to boost the so-called Abbott districts, Brick Township was one of dozens of districts receiving so-called "adjustment aid," which was supposed to be removed over time.

When then-Gov. Chris Christie slashed aid to school districts across the board in 2010, the adjustment aid was forgotten and was not addressed until 2017, when then-Senate President Steve Sweeney demanded it be cut from districts receiving it, including Brick. It led to a stalemate of the 2017-18 budget, as Christie was demanding an increase in the gasoline tax and concessions from Horizon Blue Cross, which was carrying a significant surplus despite being a not-for-profit insurance company.

The stalemate led Christie to shut down the state, and those issues quickly became overshadowed by Beachgate, where an NJ.com photographer captured Christie and his family alone on the beach at the state-owned governor's mansion on Island Beach State Park.

Sweeney received an initial round of cuts to adjustment aid that year, though half of what he sought. He followed that up with S2 in 2018, which Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law, setting in motion the state aid crisis for dozens of districts.

While Sweeney billed S2 as cutting the so-called adjustment aid, with the cuts spread over seven years, adjustment aid for all of the districts receiving it was wiped out in the 2021-22 budget. The narrative then changed to one of districts not paying their fair share of property taxes and the resulting "local fair share" has been completely unpredictable.

S2 is supposed to end with the 2024-25 budget year, but so far there has been little movement to address what happens next.

Brick Township Schools Budget 2024 by Karen Wall on Scribd

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