District cuts taxes while adding programs
BY ELAINE VAN DEVELDE
Staff Writer
This year, no one is singing the school budget blues in Tinton Falls. For the first time in a long time, taxpayers will get a little money back from their investment in education.
The borough’s school district introduced its preliminary 2005-06 budget of $24,607,504, with $15,618,289 to be raised by taxes, last week, and with it came the good news of some temporary relief.
Even with programs added and facilities fixed, they can look forward to at least an 8-cent decrease per $100 of assessed property value from the current rate of $1.498.
In Shrewsbury, taxpayers will see a maximum of a 2-cent increase in the current rate of $1.770.
“This year the news is terrific,” Schools Superintendent Leonard Kelpsh said. “We were able to add a few programs and bring back one, and we still have a savings for taxpayers. Even with additional questions, this year’s budget is a bargain with great benefits.”
In addition to the budget, there are two questions that will be posed to voters.
One proposes to fix a blistering roof at the Mahala F. Atchison School, Sycamore Avenue, at a cost of $450,000.
The roof will cost taxpayers in Tinton Falls 4 cents per $100 of assessed property value on their tax bills.
“The roof is blistering and starting to leak,” said Business Administrator Tamar Gens. “Different sections of it are different ages.”
In Shrewsbury, the question will cost taxpayers 5 cents.
The second question asks taxpayers if they would like to add a foreign language teacher at the cost of 1 cent per $100 in each town.
“It will give the world languages program the added continuity we want to achieve from second through eighth grades,” Gens said.
Without questions approved, in Tinton Falls taxpayers could see a 12.9-cent decrease, and in Shrewsbury there would be a 3.9-cent decrease.
Last year, the $23.6 million budget was approved with questions, costing Tinton Falls taxpayers a hike in bills of 11.6 cents.
But the hike kept the district’s surplus at 6 percent of the total budget, which amounts to $1.9 million.
Since the state passed a law that mandates districts go down from 6 percent of their budget in surplus to 2 percent, “taxpayers in this district will benefit at least for this year. We’re just afraid of what will happen next year, after draining a healthy surplus to follow what we think is a fiscally unsound law,” Kelpsh said.
In addition to using much of its surplus, the district sold a piece of property off Green Grove Road that “had to come back in tax relief as well,” Kelpsh said.
Then there is an issue of declining enrollment in the district, which also can be attributed for some savings.
“We’re eliminating 3.5 positions because of declining enrollment, nothing else,” Kelpsh said. “We’re just going through an enrollment slump that was predicted.”
The student population is roughly in the 1,600s, down a couple of hundred from three years ago when Kelpsh first started his tenure as superintendent.
“I’m just glad that all the scrimping and saving has paid off and the students will benefit,” he said. “I didn’t like cutting staff and programs and said as soon as I could put them back, I would. That’s what we’re doing — and taxpayers are still getting a bargain.”
The bargain, Kelpsh said, is in the additions to programming that will not cut into taxpayers’ wallets.
“With this budget, we will be able to expand the Montessori program from kindergarten to grades one, two and three, boost the foreign languages program, and add a pilot keyboarding program,” he said.
Kelpsh has been an advocate of a strong world languages program, which he has refused to implement in any other way but a consistent one.
“The kids in lower elementary grades were getting languages once a week for 30 minutes,” he said. “We took the program out because once a week for 30 minutes is just a waste of time.”
Now the district will bring foreign languages to grades two and three for 30 minutes three times a week.
“I said I would bring it back when we could do it the right way, and that’s what I’m doing,” Kelpsh said. “Now it will be a pretty effective program.”
And, bringing the program back is just part of the base budget. It doesn’t require an additional question being approved.
The keyboarding pilot program in the first grade is an experiment Kelpsh is looking forward to.
“It will give kids their first exposure to formalized music,” he said. “The idea is to see if it has residual effects in academics down the line. There are studies that show a huge correlation between music and academic success.”
Kids who learn music early show evidence of doing better in math, he said, because of the relationship of notes to numbers and logical sequential activity.
“There’s a lot to look forward to,” Kelpsh concluded.