The Millstone Township K-8 School District and the Upper Freehold Regional School District will both see the amount of financial assistance they receive from the state reduced for the 2022-23 academic year.
Earlier this month, Gov. Phil Murphy unveiled his Fiscal Year 2023 budget, which includes proposed funding for New Jersey’s public school districts during 2022-23.
According to information provided by the New Jersey Department of Education, the two local school districts will see the following year-to-year changes in their state aid:
• Millstone Township K-8 School District: The district will see a decrease of $470,000 from $3.53 million in 2021-22 to $3.06 million in 2022-23;
• Upper Freehold Regional School District: The district will see a decrease of $420,000 from $4.75 million in 2021-22 to $4.33 million in 2022-23.
The administrative staff and the volunteer school board members who serve each district are currently in the process of developing a budget for the upcoming academic year. A budget must be adopted by the end of April.
The Millstone Township K-8 School District serves school-age residents of Millstone Township.
The district has a central administrative staff and three schools: the Millstone Township Primary School, the Millstone Township Elementary School and the Millstone Township Middle School.
The Upper Freehold Regional School District serves school-age residents of Upper Freehold Township and Allentown. High school-age residents of Millstone Township attend Allentown High School through a send-receive relationship between Upper Freehold Regional and Millstone Township.
The UFRSD has a central administrative staff and three schools: the Newell Elementary School, the Stone Bridge Middle School and Allentown High School.
In terms of state aid, some school districts will see an increase in their financial support from Trenton, while some school districts will see their state aid continue to decrease, and others will have no change in their state aid.
The amount of state aid a school district receives helps to determine the amount of taxes a school board must raise from a municipality’s residential and commercial property owners to support the operation of a school district during the academic year.
For school districts that will receive less state aid in 2022-23 than they are receiving in 2021-22, the impact of the reduction will become clear when school board members introduce the budget for the upcoming academic year and administrators explain how the loss of state aid will be accommodated in the budget.
State aid to Millstone Township and to Upper Freehold Regional has decreased each year since the enactment of state legislation known as S-2 in 2018. The reduction in state aid is scheduled to continue through the 2024-25 school year under the terms of S-2.