Schools to towns:
Tell us what to cut
Every penny needed,
says school district’s
assistant administrator
Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School Dis-trict Board of Education members have told municipal officials in both of those communities that the defeated $56.9 million budget for the 2002-03 school year cannot withstand any reductions.
That being the case, school administrators told the municipal officials they must go through the budget line by line and recommend to the board where cuts should be made, Manalapan Bus-iness Administrator James Dever-eaux said Friday.
The board’s $56.9 million budget to support the operation of the K-8 district during the coming school year was rejected by voters in Manalapan and English-town on April 16. Manalapan voters defeated the budget 1,166 to 851. Englishtown voters defeated the budget 83 to 40. Combined, the budget was defeated by a count of 1,249 to 891.
The local tax levy to support the budget (the actual figure rejected by voters) was $33.3 million.
The budget adopted by the board proposed an increase in the local school tax rate in Manal-apan and a decrease in the local school tax rate in Englishtown.
The tax rate in Manalapan was proposed to rise from $1.393 to $1.485 per $100 of assessed valuation. The owner of a home assessed at $170,000 would have paid $157 more in local school taxes in 2002-03 than in 2001-02.
The tax rate in Englishtown was proposed to drop from $1.475 to $1.457 per $100 of assessed valuation. The owner of a home assessed at $100,000 would have paid $18 less in local school taxes in 2002-03 than in 2001-02.
When a school budget is defeated, it is sent to the municipal governing body for review. In this regional district, the Manalapan and Englishtown governing bodies conduct the review. The governing body has the option of leaving the budget as the board proposed it or recommending reductions in the budget.
In many cases, the governing body and the school board agree on a dollar amount to be cut from the budget, and the school board determines where the cuts should come from. That does not appear to be the resolution in this instance.
Manalapan-Englishtown School District Business Administrator Joseph F. Passiment Jr. said in a May 2 letter to municipal officials in both towns that the board had considered the request that $1 million be removed from the 2002-03 budget.
Passiment goes on to inform the governing bodies, "You must comply with the law that states that if you wish to reduce the base budget, you must identify the specific lines and items to be reduced, resulting in a reduced base budget amount. Once this has been done, the board will meet to review the reductions as required by law."
The school board may appeal the cuts recommended by the governing bodies to the state commissioner of education if the board believes the cuts will impact the thorough and efficient education of the district’s students.
The school board’s unwillingness to reduce the budget did not sit well with Manalapan Committeeman Drew Shapiro.
"We don’t pretend to know the day-to-day goings on in the school system. In the spirit of cooperation we were asking the school board to identify areas that could be cut. We had already indicated that we would not cut anything that touches any child or teacher in the district. They told us they could not cut anything from the budget," Shapiro said. "That being the case, we will go through their budget line by line and make our recommendations."
An initial meeting to discuss the defeated school spending plan was attended by Shapiro, Devereaux, Manalapan Deputy Mayor Bill Scherer, Englishtown Councilman Harry Soden and Englishtown Mayor Thomas Reynolds.
A second meeting followed with Passiment, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Maureen Lally, school board President James Mumolie, school board members Michele Stipelman and Tony Manisero, Englishtown Councilwoman Jayne Gallagher, Scherer, Shapiro, Devereaux, Soden and Reynolds.
"We want to do it in an amicable fashion with the school board so that not one child nor one teacher is hurt," Scherer said. "We think there are some cuts (that are) necessary to comply with the will of the voters."
Reynolds told the News Transcript he had no comment regarding the budget discussions.
Veronica Wolf, assistant business administrator for the school district, said, "As far as we’re concerned, every penny in that budget is necessary. It’s the governing bodies’ job under the law to determine what line items could withstand cuts and to provide a rationale as to why it would not effect the efficient education of the children."
Mumolie said school officials are waiting for the municipal representatives to provide a list of the line items they are recommending be cut from the budget.
News Transcript Managing Editor Mark Rosman contributed to this story.