Metuchen school officials welcomed news last week that the district would receive an increase in state aid for next year.
Still, Superintendent of Schools Terri Sinatra said it is too early to be optimistic.
“I have to caution that we do not become too optimistic too quickly,” she said at a Board of Education meeting on Feb. 23.
The Metuchen board will receive $483,487 in state aid for the 2011-12 school year, an increase of $307,450 from the current year. When planning the current school year’s budget last spring, the school district suffered what officials termed a “catastrophic” loss of state aid, a reduction of 89 percent from the prior year, when the district received $1.71 million.
School officials will present and introduce their 2011-12 budget at a meeting on March 3 at 8 p.m. at Metuchen High School.
“[School Business Administrator]
Mike [Harvier] and I will discuss and go over different scenarios in terms of how to make the budget numbers work,” said Sinatra. “All we know is that last year it was really difficult, and this year will also be difficult.”
The Metuchen School District was one of just a few districts in Middlesex County to have voters approve their school budget last April. The 2010-11 budget totaled $30.3 million, with a school tax rate increase of 11 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, or $217 on a home assessed at the borough average of $186,000.
The district’s entire staff, from administrators to teachers, paraprofessionals, secretaries and custodians, voluntarily agreed to a salary freeze for this year. The wage freezes brought $1.5 million in savings.
“This was before Gov. [Chris] Christie started asking the districts for a salary freeze,” Sinatra said at the time. “I am very appreciative of our staff, and what they did speaks very high volumes to the community.”