Township Council Reduces School Budget by $500,000

Lawrence Township Council last night (Monday, April 30) held its formal review of the township school district’s 2012-2013 budget that was . After listening to testimony from school administrators, Board of Education members and members of the public, council members unanimously voted to cut $500,000 from the budget.

While council members recommended specific line item reductions and suggested that the district should use more of its two surplus funds as revenue to balance its budget, the decisions about exactly what to cut remain in the hands of school officials and the school board. By law, the district can ignore the council’s recommendations about specific cuts; it need only comply with the order to reduce overall spending by $500,000.

That $500,000 cut to the 2012-2013 budget will amount to about a penny on the township’s school tax rate, meaning that the school tax rate will increase by two cents instead of the three cents it would have gone up had voters approved the budget. At the new tax rate – $2.35 per $100 of assessed property value – the owner of a home assessed (for tax purposes) at the township average of $160,828 will pay about $3,779.46 in school taxes this year, or about $32 more than last year.

The penny shaved off the school tax rate as a result of the $500,000 budget cut will save the average taxpayer about $16.

School district Superintendent Crystal Lovell last night said she and district Business Administrator Tom Eldridge will get to work right away with the principals and other district administrators to determine how best to eliminate $500,000 from the budget in a way that will have the least impact on students. Their final recommendations will, in turn, be submitted to the school board for approval. The board must approve the amended school budget by May 21.

The school budget, as it was originally presented to voters on April 17, required $58.04 million to be raised through taxes, an amount that was about $500,000 under the state’s 2 percent tax levy cap. Since the budget was below cap, no voter approval would have been necessary had the township school board opted to move the election from April to November to coincide with the state’s general election.

Legislation signed into law by Gov. Chris Christie earlier this year allows local school boards to make such a change, but .

Following the budget’s defeat at the polls and in advance of last night’s review by township council, that could result from making staff changes, altering professional development training offered to faculty, delaying equipment purchases, refurbishing instead of replacing the press box at Lawrence High School, and reducing by 5 percent all supplies throughout the district, from plumbing parts to crayons.

The savings made through staff changes, as identified by school officials, would include no layoffs: secretarial and clerical costs would be reduced through attrition, about $23,000 could be saved by altering the shift of a school security officer, and an estimated $50,000 could be cut from the budget by hiring a new 10-month assistant principal instead of filling the vacant principal’s position that exists in the Lower School at Lawrence High School.

Lovell last night explained that, due to the need to cut costs, the pilot program that this year saw the high school divided into an Upper School and a Lower School, each with its own principal and assistant principal, would be discontinued and the district would return to the old setup of having one principal and three assistant principals for the entire school.

Dave Milinowicz – who has been serving as acting principal for the Lower School following the – would resume his duties as an assistant principal alongside current Upper School Assistant Principal Clifford Williams and the new 10-month assistant principal who will be hired. Current Upper School Principal Jonathan Dauber will serve as principal of the entire high school under that setup.

Last night’s review of the school budget began with Township Manager Richard Krawczun offering council members a list of suggested cuts that would reduce the amount to be raised through school taxes by $700,549. Those cuts included the $375,000 already identified by school officials, as well as other actions like using $100,000 from the district’s capital reserve surplus fund and another $100,000 from the district’s capital maintenance reserve surplus fund as revenue.

School officials were particularly concerned about council’s suggestion the district dip into the two surplus funds.

“Our reserves impact our ability to maintain the stability of our tax levy,” Eldridge said during the meeting.

“We don’t want to take money out of either our capital reserve or our maintenance reserve. That, to us, is counter to the concept of a fiscally sound district. It undermines our strategic plan to control the tax levy, not just this year, but over years forward,” school board President Laura Waters said to council.

“When the budget went before the voters – and it did fail by 200 votes – it was already half-a-million dollars below the cap mandated by the state,” she said. “If you really want us to take another $700,000 off of our budget, we will be $1.2 million below cap and that’s a really hard hit for us, especially as Tom has pointed out regarding our long-term fiscal stability, our strategic plan for controlling the tax levy.

“We can see our way to the $375,000. We came up with that ourselves. To add on such a substantial amount, specifically in the areas where our efforts are to control the tax rate, it is going to be a difficult task for us and I don’t know that it’s in the best interests of the school district,” Waters added.

“What you’re doing is you’re borrowing from the future to pay for the present,” Thomas Patrick, the school board member who chairs the district’s Finance Committee, said about the suggestion of using $200,000 in surplus funds to reduce the budget’s tax levy. “I think if you look at what the federal government’s doing, that’s not the way to go.”

“I urge the council to consider one point,” school board member Bill Michaelson said during the meeting. “I’ve sat in a lot of school district, school Finance Committee meetings over the past several years and one of the things which Mr. Eldridge has done for us, quite competently, is he has maintained a stable tax rate through good long-range planning. The capital reserve contributions that we make and draw downs that we make are made prudently and judiciously, such that we have a good, solid long-term plan. I urge the council to consider respecting the school board’s budget because we have demonstrated the ability to manage the budget over the long-term responsibly.”

Several members of the public also spoke at the meeting, with all but one urging council to make as few cuts as possible to the school budget.

“I want to publically thank our board of education, Dr. Lovell and Mr. Eldridge for their consistent good management of the money that they know comes from the people who live in Lawrence Township. And I hope that the cuts to the school budget will be kept to a minimum,” Gedney Road resident Andrea Pennington said.

“It’s disturbing because this is our town. There’s nothing that’s more important to the life of a town than the schools. It’s why people come; it’s why people stay,” she continued. “I’m so grateful the cuts are being kept away from the classroom by not cutting staff because anybody who has children who go to school in Lawrence Township know that although we need supplies, and we need fields, and we need things done and built and purchased, that the reason why our children are getting an amazing education in Lawrence Township is because of the people who give that education. And we have to continue to value them.”

Council members spent some time debating how much should be cut from the budget. Ultimately, the decision to reduce the budget by $500,000 was based on a recommendation made by Councilman Michael Powers.

“We have outstanding schools here. And everybody knows the first thing you ask your real estate agent is, ‘How are the schools?’ We have a duty as policymakers to make sure that the reputation of our schools is kept intact. That being said, there was a referendum. Like it or not, the budget was rejected,” Powers said. “These are the experts, these are the folks that we entrust with our children… I think it needs to be more than $375,000 but I’m not going to be shortsighted in terms of making a chainsaw cut if it’s going to have a long-term impact in terms of the quality of the education to our students and our residents. So what I’m going to throw out there is a $500,000 number, which would equal one penny [on the school tax rate].”

For School Budget and School Board Background, See:

• April 27: ""
• April 23: ""
• April 23: ""
• April 20: ""
• April 18: ""
• April 16: “”
• April 13: “”
• April 12: “”
• April 2: “”
• March 28: “”
• Feb. 29: “”
• Feb. 29: “”
• Feb. 15: “”
• Jan. 11: “”