Schools chief not happy
with town’s $525K cut
HAZLET — School officials are saying cuts to the defeated $37.3 million budget are too deep. Township officials say you can’t cut corners that weren’t there in the first place.
To hear either side talk is to now know that prospects for amenable agreements on the issue have become moot.
Nonetheless, the Township Committee voted last week to cut $525,773 from the defeated 2002-03 school tax levy. Such a cut translates into whittling 2.5 cents per $100 of assessed valuation off the proposed school tax hike of 23.5 cents per $100. The district must abide by the dollar amount of the cuts, not necessarily the places the Township Committee suggested they come from. The amount to be cut was due to Monmouth County Monday.
Without the cuts, the homeowner with a home assessed at $160,000 would pay an additional $376 in school taxes. With the cuts, said Superintendent of Schools Renae LaPrete, the taxpayer would be paying "$40 less a year, or $3.33 a month for all of what was proposed in programs and staff to keep class size down and have it all. For that little, there’s so much the students will have to do without.
"There are other districts where the budget was defeated by way more than 48 voters (which was the case in Hazlet), and those districts are cutting far less. In no way, shape or form was 48 votes a mandate to cut in my mind. The township officials heard us but didn’t listen. I’m not pleased."
The school district proposed $323,391 in cuts, plus $58,000 anticipated savings from shared services, LaPrete added.
Mayor Christopher Cullen saw the cuts as not doing without but rather students not missing what they’ve never had.
"Most of the cuts recommended are for things the schools never had," said Cullen. "It’s not like we’re taking something they had from them." School officials say it’s part of keeping competitive pace with other districts and a growing population.
To achieve the $525,773 tax levy cut, the township recommended making the following cuts: $150,000 in roof repairs at Beers Street Elementary School; $72,000 in salaries for six instructional aides; $30,000 in health benefit costs saved from not hiring the aides; $24,000 for field trips; $18,130 for sports physicals; $18,575 for transportation; $5,068 for a weight room coach; $30,000 in asphalt paving costs; $28,000 in "breakage" costs, which are costs saved when a teacher retires and a new hire is brought in to replace that teacher at a lesser rate of pay; and $150,000 in proposed textbook purchases.
Cullen said the roof repair for Beers Street was under-budgeted to begin with. "It would have actually cost $390,000, which the board couldn’t have afforded anyway. They put in for $200,00 in their budget, which would have only covered half. … So we recommended they spend the $50,000 [to patch the roof] and cut $150,000 of the $200,000 they budgeted for since they couldn’t have afforded it anyway."
He added that this was a typical example of doing what the committee had to do to keep the budget down. Cullen stressed that students would not do without. Even though some of the additions proposed would have been nice, they were not necessary, he said. LaPrete couldn’t have disagreed more.
"Nothing was done to affect class size or teachers," said Cullen. "We stressed shared services, an area in which a lot of money can be saved. For instance, we’re going to patch the parking lot with a new machine that the township just bought rather than contract out to pave it. We’ll help with snow removal. And some janitorial services will be farmed out to the Board of Education for mowing of ballfields and that sort of thing."
Cullen went on to say that the district would not actually be losing textbooks with the proposed $150,000 cut in textbooks. "It sounds like it’s a cut when you see it that way. It’s not. They’ve leased the books before. They’ll still have the books, but they’ll just continue to lease rather than buy them."
Concerning the $72,000 savings for instructional aides, Cullen said school officials wanted eight aides. Out of the eight, the committee recommended that they keep two for kindergarten because the state mandates there be an aide in a class of over 25 students.
LaPrete’s countered that she tried to avert hiring new teachers by proposing the aides. Hiring new teachers, she said, would be more expensive in the long run, and class size, she anticipated, is nearing the limit. "Twenty-eight is the magic number," she said. "Instructional aides were going to be in classes with 22 to 27 students. Now if the number goes to 27 plus, there will be no aides — that’s affecting students adversely. The phone is ringing off the hook. People are not happy. We have no instructional aides, no field trips. We had a 1.5-cent cut on the table. With this, too much is being forsaken. People say we have frozen state aid. It’s actually a loss. You get what you get, but there are no increases to keep pace with changes and expanding needs."