Brick School Board OKs 2025-26 Budget With Tax Increase, Minimal Cuts

BRICK, NJ — The Brick Township Board of Education approved a final budget for the 2025-26 school year that includes a 5.14 percent increase in the property tax levy.

The total budget of $171,207,418 includes a property tax levy of $134,767,772, after the board approved seeking an increase in the tax levy above the 2 percent cap under the New Jersey Department of Education's Tax Levy Incentive Program.

The tax rate for 2025-26 is $1.2755, up 0.0607 from the $1.2148 tax rate for 2024-25 school year. That rise is an increase of $182.90 per year for a home assessed at the township average of $301,320.

The budget includes a net reduction of seven full-time positions, Superintendent Thomas Farrell said. The district is eliminating 12 support positions and a half-time equivalent instructional position, but the district needs six more positions for special education students to meet IEP requirements, including two teachers, three aides and one PreK position, officials said.

Farrell said the positions that are being eliminated are anticipated to be absorbed through retirements and resignations.

"We're protecting all teacher positions, we're ensuring class sizes don't go up," said Mike Mesmer, the school board's vice president and head of the board's finance committee.

Over the previous five years, the district has eliminated 450 positions, Farrell said.

The school board's approval to exceed the tax levy cap included an additional $208,074 in state funding as a result, business administrator James Edwards said.

Susan McNamara, the district's director of planning, research and evaluation, said class sizes will remain at 20 to 25 students for kindergarten, an average of 23 in first, second and third grades, and 24 in fourth grade except at Osbornville and Veterans Memorial Elementary, where it will be 29. Fifth grade classes will average 25, with a high of 38 at Lanes Mill Elementary.

The middle schools will average 28 to 29 students per class, and the high schools will have 26 to 27 students per class in core subjects, McNamara said.

Pressures on the budget include the special education needs, officials said. Of the district's approximately 8,200 students, 22.5 percent have some kind of special education classification, officials said.

Farrell said the state is adjusting how it is calculating special education aid to school districts, moving from a census-based calculation to one that is based on actual enrollment. However, for 2025-26, Brick is receiving only $871,175 in aid, when the special education enrollment should afford the Brick Schools $3,697,601.

"There was $2,826,426 withheld," he said. "Brick is now once again negatively affected by the NJDOE's new creation of adjustment aid."

The district's preschool expansion aid is increasing again, with $7.2 million to support 36 preschool classrooms for 2025-25.

Parents who attended the meeting spoke in support of the tax levy increase to prevent large increases in class sizes.

"I realize not everyone will appreciate a tax increase but as a parent I can share confidently that parents across the district are willing to step up," said Kelly Bond, the PTA president at Osbornville Elementary, where her children attend.

"Supporting our schools benefits everyone not just families with children," she said. "When our schools succeed our neighborhoods become safer and more well-connected."

Larry Reid, who served on the school board from 2012-14, said people need to be pressuring the state Legislature over usage of the state's Property Tax Relief Fund, which was established years ago to offset property taxes for education.

That fund had $20 billion in 2024, and Reid said the money from that fund is used for other projects instead.

"That money is supposed to be going to the schools," Reid said.

Farrell said the district is still nearly $28 million below adequacy — the amount of money the state Department of Education says is necessary to provide a thorough-and-efficient education to Brick's students.

The state Department of Education also has said the Brick Township School District's local fair share tax levy is $213,940,281 — more than $79,172,509 or 58.7 percent more than the tax levy of $134,767,772 in the 2025-26 budget.