School Referendum Question Before Chatham Voters: What To Know

CHATHAM, NJ — This coming Tuesday, residents will be asked to vote on two questions on the ballot looking to spend a total of an additional $1.7 million to fund additional security and health benefits for paraprofessionals at the school district.

According to Chatham Superintendent Michael LaSusa, the school district has developed two ballot measures, which voters will be able to vote on separately.

Last year, the school district made the decision to include a second question on the November election ballot to fund the construction of six security vestibules, with the final interpretive statement being submitted to the county clerk's office this summer.

Bradley Smith, chair of the board's finance committee, has stated that the second question for the general public to vote on in the November elections is due to Chatham's inability to use the surplus COVID-19 funds in the budget for the upcoming year.

The First Proposal

The first measure involves the safety and security of the district's school buildings.

Prior to the pandemic, in early 2020, the school board was organizing a referendum that would have involved the construction of security vestibules at all of the schools' major entrances.

Security vestibules are two sets of locking doors that provide a safe entrance for all guests.

Since 2016, New Jersey has required them in all new school construction; however, due to their age, none of the Chatham schools have them. At the moment, when a guest is accepted into one of the district's schools, they enter a main hallway and have access to the entire campus.

A security vestibule has a second set of locking steel doors so that once a visitor arrives, they are in a secure area and cannot advance into the school unless authorized admission by school personnel.

The estimated cost of constructing secure vestibules at all schools is $850,000, which represents a 1.23 percent increase in the school district tax levy.

Once the secure vestibules are built, the $850,000 will become part of the school district's base budget and will be devoted to ongoing security and safety costs in the district's operating budget, most notably the hiring of police officers at all schools, officials said.

The board said that they chose to raise the tax levy and incorporate the funding into the ongoing operating budget because security-related expenses have skyrocketed over the past decade.

"There were no security personnel in the district ten years ago. Now there is a security team of district staff and police funded entirely by the Board of Education. There were few surveillance cameras a decade ago. Now there are 290 of them... In short, there are ongoing expenses that exceed $1 million in our operating budget that divert funds from education-related priorities. By incorporating the construction costs for security vestibules into the tax levy, it will enable the district to dedicate a long-term source of funding to security and safety needs, thus freeing up more funding in the operating budget to direct toward educational priorities," district officials said.

The Second Proposal

The second ballot proposal has to do with supporting students receiving special support services.

According to the school system, around 16 percent of children receive special education help, which frequently takes the form of assistance from a second adult in the classroom. The additional adult is known as a paraprofessional, also known as a teacher's aide or assistant, and is a mandatory component of many children's educational programs.

Paraprofessionals help students access their educational program by doing a variety of duties, ranging from diapering children in pre-K to assisting with behavioral and attentional support in high school.

According to LaSusa, prior to 2008, the school district provided health benefits to paraprofessional staff because they were full-time employees.

However, in order to manage the district's budget after 2008, the district chose to convert all full-time positions into part-time work in order to generate additional employees without having to pay for health benefits.

"It was a budget savings measure, and you could argue that it worked well for quite a while, but in recent years, it's been increasingly difficult to find staff willing to do these jobs, and it's been increasingly common that we are losing staff to other districts that offer health benefits," LaSusa said.

The School District of the Chathams has been publicly confronted with a continuing decline in both teachers and paraprofessionals within the district for several months and has been looking for ways to attract new employees.

Bradley Smith, chair of the board's finance and facilities committee, has previously said that one of the few things that would help keep staff within the district is more money.

The ballot proposal is to raise $900,000 for the provision of single health benefits coverage to this employee segment. If approved, the $900,000 would represent a 1.30 percent increase in the district tax levy and would become part of the base district budget moving forward.

"It would then enable the district to collapse the roughly 130 part-time positions into roughly 70 full-time positions with single-level health benefits. It is our hope and belief that this improvement would lead to more applicants for these positions and better retention of these individuals, all of which would benefit our neediest learners and the operation of our schools," the school district said.

Tax Impact

Because the School District of the Chathams is a regional school district, which simply means that it is made up of more than one municipality, the formula used to apportion taxation is based on the equalized value of property in both municipalities.

The total value of property in the district is determined by adding the values of property in Chatham Borough and Chatham Township. The tax levy determined by the Board of Education is then allocated depending on the proportion of each municipality's total value.

“How the levy costs are split between the Borough and Township is based on equalized values provided by the County,” explained Peter Daquila, Business Administrator for the School District of Chathams.

These numbers are utilized since reassessments in the two towns are frequently out of sync. This formula was devised when the regional school district was formed, and it is typical of how regional school districts share costs.

Based on equalized value, the township pays 58 percent of education costs, and the borough pays 42 percent.

If the proposals are approved, the exact tax amounts will be based on the present assessed values of the homes, not the equalized values. Because the Township has not recently completed a revaluation, its assessed values are below market, implying a slightly higher rate.

The below list reflects the costs of the two levies per year if they are passed in November:

• Chatham Borough:
  • Question 1: $11.40 / year
  • Question 2: $12.16 / year
  • Yes to both: $23.64 / year
• Chatham Township:
  • Question 1: $14.59 / year
  • Question 2: $15.45 / year
  • Yes to both: $30.04 / year

"We recognize that these two ballot measures represent a sacrifice for our taxpayers. We have sought to avoid capital proposals via referendum in recent years and we have done our best to maintain the tax levy increases to a responsible minimum," the school board said.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the total cost of the two second questions was $850.00; that is the cost of only one of the proposals. The total cost is $1.75 million.