New Jersey released school aid numbers. Here’s a town-by-town breakdown. – NorthJersey.com

All North Jersey counties will see an overall increase in state education aid if Gov. Phil Murphy’s 2023 fiscal year budget proposal is approved — except Sussex County, where 19 out of 25 school districts lost nearly 8% of their aid, and Hudson County, which lost about 5% in overall aid.

Bergen County schools will get the biggest aid increase in North Jersey, with 15% more than the current year; Essex County will get 11%, Morris County 9.8%, Passaic County about 6.7%, Union County about 12% and Warren County an increase of 2.6%.

New Jersey’s other more rural counties, including Cape May, Ocean and Monmouth, also lost state aid, but not as much as Sussex County. 

State aid to Sussex County districts was cut by nearly $8 million, from $87.8 million in the current fiscal year to $80.7 million for 2023. It was the same in 2021, when the northernmost county in the state lost $5 million.

“Twenty-three million over three years has been taken from taxpayers in Sussex County,” said Craig Hutcheson, superintendent of the Kittatinny Regional School District and a county resident. “That’s excessive.”

The cuts to Sussex County come from falling enrollment. County schools saw the largest enrollment drop statewide since 2009, at around 29%. 

But these reductions in aid are coming at the tail end of the pandemic, and will hurt students more than ever, said superintendents from Kittatinny and Stillwater Township schools. The cuts should have been postponed or eased using the state’s reserve of federal relief funds from the American Rescue Plan, said Sen. Steven Oroho, R-Sussex.

Enrollment drives funding, said Sen. Vin Gopal, D-Monmouth, the newly appointed chair of the Senate Education Committee. “This has been in law for years, so there are no surprises at any point,” said Gopal. “The challenge in freezing these cuts is: What do you do to a district that has gained a significant amount of enrollment?”

Gopal and Oroho are members of a task force created to review the state’s school funding formula, as part of a bill sponsored by them to reexamine how the state’s public schools are funded.

Gopal said the task force will “restudy” the formula to make sure the factors it takes into consideration are on par with the latest data, including 2020 census counts, free and reduced lunch populations and poverty rates.

“I think we’re addressing as many areas as possible,” he said. Funding for the state’s public schools is calculated based on the 2008 School Funding Reform Act.

Hutcheson said the drop in enrollment over 13 years does not match the 55% drop in state aid to Sussex County over the past four years. “Our state aid has significantly outpaced our loss in enrollment,” he said.

“We were hoping that coming out of the pandemic it would be recognized, where the state financial aid situation is abundant in cash, that the school districts who were receiving significant or any state aid cuts from the DOE funding formula would be given at least a year where they would not be experiencing cuts,” Hutcheson said.

NJ school spending:Here is what’s included in NJ’s $19.2 billion budget proposal for local schools

Kittatinny Regional was losing 70% of its aid over seven years, Hutcheson said. The state is going through a process of correcting historical imbalances in how school district funding was calculated across the state, according to a law passed by state Democrats in 2018.

Murphy could have considered using federal relief funds or surplus revenues to stave off cuts in state aid to K-12 schools in rural and suburban districts, Hutcheson said. 

Murphy’s budget also provides $20 million in one-time funding, called stabilization aid, for which schools losing aid can apply.

Aid to other North Jersey districts:

BERGEN COUNTY — The Hackensack school district gained $7 million; Little Ferry school district lost $630,000; Lodi schools gained $5 million; New Milford gained $1.7 million; North Arlington gained $1.4 million; Fair Lawn, New Milford and Lyndhurst schools all saw significant gains in state aid.

HUDSON COUNTY — Hoboken schools lost about $700,000; North Bergen schools lost $2.7 million.

MORRIS COUNTY — Dover schools gained $8 million; Jefferson schools lost $2.6 million; Randolph schools lost $1.4 million; Parsippany-Troy Hills schools gained $1.4 million; Mount Olive schools gained $5.4 million.

PASSAIC COUNTY — Clifton schools gained $12 million; Haledon schools gained $1.5 million; city of Passaic schools gained $10 million; Passaic County Vocational High School gained $14.5 million; Paterson schools gained $18.6 million; Wayne schools gained $1.4 million; West Milford lost $2 million.

The largest increases in state aid went to the poorest districts, which is how the formula is expected to work. The city of Elizabeth received $37 million more in direct state aid, going up to $486 million total. Plainfield also gained about $37 million.

Jersey City, though, lost $68 million in aid from the state, while Newark gained the most aid, with nearly $121 million.

Sussex County schools:‘Truly heartbreaking’: Sussex County educators decry more school state aid cuts

Superintendent George Solter of North Bergen said he did not expect to lose nearly $3 million in aid. “We’re obviously disappointed,” he said. “A lot of other similar districts went up in state allocations.”

Solter said his school is looking into the numbers and expects to ask the state why this occurred. He said enrollment in his district dropped by around 200 students over the past two years.

Setbacks in the formula for rural schools 

Six Jersey Shore districts united in a lawsuit against Murphy’s Department of Education in July when it did not provide them with codes and formulas used to determine how state aid is distributed. A judge ruled in their favor and ordered the state to turn over funding data and formula codes that drive how aid is provided to the state’s 600 school districts.

Hutcheson, whose district signed on to the lawsuit as a contributing party from both Hampton and Kittatinny, said he has not received the formulas, but hopes they will help uncover why these Sussex County schools are suffering losses along with schools in Cape May, Ocean and Monmouth counties.

Kittatinny Regional High School did not suffer too much during the first three years of cuts from the 2018 law, because the school was able to absorb the losses through staff retirements and combined positions. “Last year was the first year of a big change,” Hutcheson said.

Classes were combined and nearly 12 positions were eliminated last year. The school lost its printing program. Hutcheson foresees losing 10 additional positions with the newly announced cuts. “We’re being decimated staffing-wise,” he said.

Story continues below gallery.

Reductions in state aid have affected the Stillwater school district, which shares its superintendent with the Sandyston-Walpack district, also in Sussex County. The nearly $300,000 loss in aid will affect staffing and programs this year, presenting an additional challenge as the schools emerge from the pandemic, said Superintendent William Kochis.

“It has also become extremely difficult to budget and plan since the full funding formula is not shared with districts,” he said.

Kittatinny serves 800 students in grades 7 to 12. Another law, S3488, provides financial incentives to school boards that explore ways to share facilities and “regionalize,” or combine their districts. 

Hutcheson said he could not explore that option for his school because the state has not yet created a process to implement this law, and that it is too late now to consider it.

“We’re in the throes of the budget season,” he said. Hutcheson said four other school districts in the area are interested in considering regionalization. This could reduce damages from state cuts by about half a million dollars.

Taxpayers of Kittatinny and Hampton will now be responsible for 90% of the school budgets, up from 70%, he said. The maximum that Kittatinny school budget can earn in taxes this year is $300,000, though the actual amount will end up being around $245,000, he said. The district is losing almost $1.1 million.

Another setback that has hit rural districts is inflation, which will raise transportation costs for Kittatinny and elsewhere. The 135-square-mile school district is expecting a large spike in busing costs. “I don’t think that’s been recognized,” Hutcheson said, noting that some students spend an hour on the school bus.

School aid calculations are also affected by a county’s cost of living, another factor that rural schools want addressed.

“It’s not any cheaper to educate in Sussex County than it is anywhere in the state. I would argue that with transportation costs it’s probably more expensive for the regular apples-to-apples general ed student,” Hutcheson said. Kittatinny receives $630,000 in transportation aid. That is not even 25% of the school’s total transportation budget, he said.

Mary Ann Koruth covers education for NorthJersey.com. To get unlimited access to the latest news about New Jersey’s schools and how it affects your children, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: koruthm@northjersey.com

Twitter: @MaryAnnKoruth