School working on budget

Awaiting state tax information

By: Lacey Korevec
   School officials are waiting for word from the state.
   Cranbury School Business Administrator Carolyn Eversole said the administration is hoping to present a 2007 budget to the school board at an 8 p.m. public meeting Feb. 20. However, the plan won’t be finalized until the district knows how much state aid it will receive and what a proposed 4 percent cap on the total amount to be raised for taxes could mean for the district, she said.
   "Basically, we’re waiting for the rules of the game," she said.
   Ms. Eversole later said, "The biggest problem we have is, what do they really mean by 4 percent. It’s very hard to build a budget when you don’t know what amounts you’re allowed and in what perimeters."
   The current $14.8 million budget increased the tax rate by 7.04 cents, from $2.182 per $100 of assessed valuation to $2.252. Under that rate, the owner of a house assessed at the township average of $225,000 is paying $5,067 in school taxes, a $158 increase from the previous year.
   Ms. Eversole said the district also is waiting to find out what the tuition will be for sending high school students to Princeton High School.
   Board member Elizabeth Silverman said the tuition will definitely go up and the number of Cranbury students attending the school is on the rise as well.
   "We’ll have a few more Princeton High School students going in this year than we did last year and that tuition will be going up," she said. "We don’t know by how much, but it will go up."
   The district paid a total of $3.8 million to Princeton Regional School District to send an estimated 255 students to the high school for the 2006-2007 school year at a tuition rate of roughly $15,000 per student, Ms. Eversole said.
   In addition, the board is considering adding either field hockey or wrestling to the Cranbury School’s sports roster, which could have an effect on spending.
   "No decision has been made on that, but if we do that, it will cost more," Ms. Silverman said.
   Other than that, Ms. Silverman said it’s a status quo year and the district will spend some money on minor maintenance repairs and new equipment, including fire safety equipment, roof work and sink replacements.
   "In any school, the major expense is teachers salaries," she said. "And all these other things, they can up it by a couple thousand, but in a budget that’s as big as ours is, a couple thousand is really not significant."
   However, Ms. Silverman said she doesn’t expect spending to decrease in any area.
   "We really don’t have that option," she said. "Practically everything we do is mandated. Practically everything we do, we have to do, so we try to be as cost efficient as possible but it’s not as if we have programs that could be cut."