By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
The Lawrence Township Board of Education gave final approval to the school district’s proposed $67.5 million budget for 2013-14 at a joint meeting with Township Council last week.
Township Council and the school board met March 21 to share their respective budgets, but the focus of the meeting was a public hearing on the school district budget. Township Council has scheduled an April 16 public hearing on its $43 million budget.
In a change from past practice, there will not be a public vote next month on the school district’s $61.8 million tax levy to support the 2013-14 budget. That’s because there will no longer be a school board election and budget vote in April.
The school board voted last year to take advantage of a new state law that allows school districts to move the school board election from April to November. The law also allows school districts to eliminate a vote on the tax levy, provided it does not exceed the state-mandated 2-percent cap.
The Lawrence school district’s 7-cent increase in the tax levy is 2.6 percent, which exceeds the 2-percent cap, but Business Administrator Thomas Eldridge said the district can exceed the cap because it has tapped into its “cap bank.” The school district did not use all of its allowable tax levy increases over the past few years. State law allowed it to “bank” the amount that was not raised, which is $3.7 million.
The 7-cent increase means the school district property tax rate will go up from $2.35 per $100 of assessed value to $2.42. The owner of a house assessed at the township average of $160,262 would pay $3,878 in property taxes for the $61.8 million tax levy to support the budget. This is a $112 increase over last year’s tax bill.
Mr. Eldridge told the school board and Township Council last week that “school is not about the three R’s it’s about all the things that kids need” to be able to learn. It ranges from having a translator to the school nurse and the school guidance counselor, he said.
He cautioned that “you can’t run a school district like a business.” It is not comparable to a business because there are many government regulations. Those regulations “are made all for the better, (but) they bind our hands,” he said.
”It’s a Catch 22,” Mr. Eldridge said. The school district is not only concerned with education; it also has to provide social services. If a child needs counseling, it is provided because “we need to take a child where he is and make him ready to learn,” he said.
Turning to the budget, Mr. Eldridge said the school district tax levy has not changed much over the past five years. It has increased by a total of 3 percent in the past five years from $59.5 million in 2009-10, to $61.3 million for 2013-14 while the consumer price index has climbed by 7 percent.
Comparing the 2009-10 budget with the 2013-14 budget, Mr. Eldridge said the spending plan allocated 39 percent of the budget on the regular education program in 2009-10 and 37 percent in the 2013-14 budget. The percentage of the budget spent on special education programs has remained unchanged, at 17 percent.
The percentage of the budget spent on other areas, such as transportation, administration and security, maintenance and utilities, also has changed very little over the past five years, Mr. Eldridge said. While the amount of money spent on those items has remained basically flat, the amount for salaries and benefits has soared from about $30 million in the 2000-01 budget to a little more than $50 million for 2013-14, he said.
The school district belongs to five consortiums that purchase services and items in bulk to create savings for its members, Mr. Eldridge said, adding that “I don’t know of any more economies of scale.” The district tries to control costs wherever it can, he said.
”If we have to add staff, we do it (only) when necessary,” Mr. Eldridge said.
Councilman Michael Powers thanked Mr. Eldridge for his presentation. Commenting that a school district is “labor intensive,” he asked about the current school population and whether the number of students has stabilized.
Superintendent of Schools Crystal Edwards replied that the district had experienced an unexpected increase in the kindergarten enrollment, and attributed it to the economy. She speculated that the increase in enrollment may be related to families moving in together to save on housing costs.
School board president Laura Waters concurred that the current kindergarten class is the largest one that the district has experienced in a long time. Many of those registrations occurred just before school began, she said, noting that “the question is whether that (enrollment increase) is just a blip or whether it will become a trend.”
Wrapping up the meeting, Ms. Waters told the audience that she wanted to make it clear that “our books are open to you. This is your district. You own it. We love questions, and we have all the information you want.”

