PRINCETON AREA: The reaction to school aid hike is muted

By Stephanie Vaccaro, Staff Writer
   While the increase in state aid to public schools announced this week by Gov. Chris Christie was welcomed by area school superintendents, they are not exactly thrilled by it.
   The dollar amounts add up an increase in aid of $741,409 for Princeton Regional Schools, $1,514,468 for West Windsor-Plainsboro and $709,531 for Montgomery.
   Judy Wilson, superintendent for Princeton Regional Schools, said, “We have many needs that have gone unaddressed due to the original cut in aid of $3.7 million. That was the cut for PRS that was announced in February/March 2010 for the 2010-11 school year that just ended. For the 2011-12 budget year, 20 percent of that cut had been reinstated, and this announcement will give us a second lump sum of 20 percent restoration in aid.
   ”The major categories of need lie in the major categories that were cut last year: personnel, technology and facilities maintenance.”
   So the restoration is only a partial one at 40 percent, leaving 60 percent yet to be restored, said Ms. Wilson.
   ”Every movement toward restoration of aid is significant in the education of our children,” said Ms. Wilson.
   ”The impact of the aid will depend on the guidelines that have yet to be published,” said Earl Kim, superintendent for Montgomery Township School District.
   The statement released by the governor’s office indicated the increase in education aid will provide property tax relief to New Jerseyans.
   ”Given the timing of the announcement, the governor must have known that budgets will have been struck in April and that existing guidelines prevent us from increasing our budgets even if unanticipated revenue like this drops in our laps,” said Mr. Kim. “We literally have to encumber every penny before we spend the additional funds, which create revenue issues the following year because typically one relies on savings generated in one year to carry forward as budgeted revenue in the next school year. Any wild fluctuations in revenue streams from one year to the next creates tax cap problems for districts. If we are forced to spend every penny in the current year to access new state aid, then we create a fiscal instability for ourselves.”
   ”We are still working our way out of the fiscal instability brought on by the $5.6 million in state aid cuts since Feb 2009,” said Mr. Kim. “Does $700,000 help? Absolutely, and we appreciate the work of legislators and the governor in funding the formula, but it is a fraction of what we lost and a still smaller fraction of what the funding formula requires for under-adequacy funded and over-local-fair-share districts like ours.”
   ”Our property tax levy ends up having to carry the burden of every dollar that we are shorted in state school aid,” said Mr. Kim. “To date, we are down a net of $4 million, and by our estimates the formula calls for an additional $3.5 million or so in state aid. I think our residents would welcome another 11 percent reduction in their school tax levy that would result from the formula being funded the way it was intended.”
   ”More is, of course, much better than less,” said Larry Shanok, assistant superintendent for finance for the West Windsor-Plainsboro School District. “We don’t want to sound ungrateful in any way, shape or form.”
   ”But it’s a unique opportunity for tax relief,” he said. “So there’s not a lot to do right now, and we have to leave it for later in tax relief.”
   Mr. Shanok pointed out that their system experienced a 71 percent decrease in state aid from the 2009-2010 year to the 2010-2011 year, which mean a curtailment of programs and higher property taxes.