State Cuts School Funding For Cherry Hill Again

CHERRY HILL, NJ — For the second straight year, the state will reduce its funding for Cherry Hill schools.

The Cherry Hill School District is slated to receive $28,592,928 in state-equalization aid for the 2025-26 school year, according to figures that state officials released on Thursday. That's a 3 percent cut and an $884,317 reduction from the current year's totals.

Last year, state officials reduced Cherry Hill's aid by 19 percent — one of the biggest drops among all New Jersey school districts for the 2024-25 school year.

Some of that aid was restored last year, following advocacy from districts like Cherry Hill's that were slated for significant drops in funding. The Cherry Hill School District received an extra $3.1 million as a result.

However, it means Cherry Hill is losing nearly $4 million from the prior year, according to Superintendent Dr. Kwame Morton and School Board President Gina Winters.

"This decrease poses undeniable challenges, and difficult decisions will need to be made," Morton and Winters said in a letter to the district community. "We want to reassure our community that, despite these challenges, we remain committed to meeting our students' needs and maintaining the high quality education Cherry Hill is known for."

School equalization aid is designed to eliminate funding gaps among New Jersey's school districts. But the state's distribution of school aid has long been controversial for its year-to-year unpredictability.

The 2026 fiscal year, which starts in July, will be the first to feature New Jersey's new funding formula for school equalization aid. The new calculations are designed to reduce year-to-year volatility in state funding, with no district receiving more than a 3 percent cut. The maximum increase is 6 percent.

• Read more: NJ School Aid Amounts Released For 2025-26: Who's Getting More?

Cherry Hill students, officials and community members made several trips to the Statehouse last year to call for better funding.

Advocates for Cherry Hill schools have said the district, one of New Jersey's largest, is historically underfunded. Cherry Hill had benefitted from the funding formula known as "S2," which had raised state funding for the district each year since it went into effect for 2018-19.

But in the 2024-25 school year, the final year S2 was implemented, Cherry Hill's state aid significantly dropped.

Cherry Hill will continue working with state and local leadership to explore options for additional funding, according to Morton and Winters. Those efforts will include collaboration with Fair Funding Cherry Hill, a group that advocates for district funding from the state.

Community members can also learn more about the impact of the aid reduction at two upcoming school board meetings at 6:30 p.m. March 11 and 18 in the Lewis Administration Building. The meetings will also be live-streamed.