BY BRIAN DONAHUE
Staff Writer
EAST BRUNSWICK – The last five years have presented an unwelcome challenge for the Board of Education.
While enrollment went up by more than the capacity of its largest elementary school, state funding remained completely flat. For many residents, the most obvious result of that is the annual school tax increases; but for school officials, the situation has presented new challenges in the way of prioritizing.
“You have to look at ways of how you can most efficiently use what you have,” Superintendent of Schools Jo Ann Magistro said, noting for example that the board is cutting two information technology positions that had become vacant.
The board has also veered toward privatization in the way of custodial services in recent years, at all schools except East Brunswick High School. That will change this year, when five nighttime custodians at the high school are replaced by a private service. Three of the school’s current 10 custodians will remain in place, while two others will be moved to elementary schools.
“There are a lot of really tough choices that school districts are making,” Magistro said.
Some of those are made each year when the department heads bring her their budget requests. This year, Magistro said, she cut $4.9 million from those priority lists.
The bottom line is to find solutions that don’t hurt education.
“Holding onto the programs you have is what’s important,” said Patricia LaDuca, the district’s coordinator of community relations and programs.
East Brunswick’s school budget – the subject of a public hearing at 8 o’clock tonight at Churchill Junior High School, Norton Road – will total $122.2 million for 2006-07, a 5.7 percent increase over the current year.
With state aid funding just about a sixth of the budget, taxpayers will see their share rise once again. The budget calls for an increase of 21.1 cents to support the general fund, bringing the school tax rate to $4.74 per $100 of assessed valuation. (The tax rate will rise by an additional 9.7 cents as a result of the referendum voters approved in December 2004.)
Though residents will vote only on the general fund tax increase April 18, the total school tax increase with debt service would be $308 for the owner of property assessed at $100,000.
The hike is largely the result of rising fuel and electric costs, along with contractual increases for salaries and benefits.
However, school officials boast that they have avoided far greater costs in each of those areas. For example, as the result of contract negotiations three years ago with the teachers’ union, a new health benefits program was implemented that officials say has saved the district $4 million. Magistro said the district switched from a traditional health coverage plan that was “very robust,” and teachers now contribute to their plans.
“Our teachers and our administrators worked cooperatively with the board to negotiate a different plan, because we realized the community had concerns about those kinds of costs,” Magistro said.
The school district has been recognized for its energy conservation program, which has saved the district nearly $3.1 million over a four-year period ending last November, according to school Business Administrator Bernardo Giuliana. The program uses computer software to monitor energy usage, and changes were made to reduce costs – heat is turned on only when necessary, for example, and staff members were trained in energy conservation.
“When we’re not using something, it’s turned off,” Giuliana said. “We’re just doing the everyday things that we try to do at home.”
Though tight, the school budget does include a few additions.
Three new teachers are proposed at the high school, where a ninth class period is being added to the school day. Whereas a nine-period schedule is in place at the middle and junior high schools, the high school has traditionally offered just eight classes per day. As a result, some 500 students opt out of their lunch period in order to take elective courses such as music, art or business.
The budget also provides for a new half-time teacher in music and another in art, both to deal with growing enrollment at the elementary schools.
Other new expenses include replacement of the heating and piping system at Frost; boiler replacement at Chittick; and new heating/ventilation systems at Bowne-Munro, Chittick, Warnsdorfer and the high school.
“All these schools still have the same systems they had when they were first built,” Magistro said.
The school district will also spend $337,500 to renovate the track and athletic fields at the high school as part of a new lease-purchase program being financed over five years.
Replacement text books are planned for fourth-grade social studies, high school Latin, environmental science and pre-calculus.
Despite those line items, Magistro described the school budget as conservative, one that holds onto current programs while funding new state and federal mandates, such as No Child Left Behind and a host of special education requirements.
“It’s a budget that allows us to maintain what we have and fix what we must,” Magistro said. “We worked hard to streamline the budget so that it did not go over cap” [the state-imposed limit on increased spending].
“I really think the community is getting a good return for the money they put out for education in this town.”