Budget Woes To End Courtesy Busing In Freehold Regional HS District

MANALAPAN, NJ — Come September, students who live closer than 2.5 miles to their school in the Freehold Regional High School District may no longer receive courtesy busing, the district says.

Seven years of state aid reductions under the so-called "S2" funding formula will have amounted to $30 million in aid cuts by the next budget cycle, the district says.

And one local Marlboro official says he wants action from the state to avoid this busing change. Marlboro High School is one of six in the regional district.

Marlboro Council President Juned Qazi, on behalf of the Marlboro Township Council, said yesterday he is demanding that Governor Murphy and the Acting Commissioner of Education Angelica Allen-McMillan "immediately restore state aid funding to the Freehold Regional High School District to avoid having students being forced to walk to school along busy and treacherous roadways which are not suitable for pedestrian use."

Qazi said "On behalf of Marlboro families and children, we implore the Governor to restore our state aid so that the students of Marlboro may travel safely to school in the upcoming school year."

He said the state "has billions in reserves that can address this funding shortfall."

The planned busing cuts follow years of staff reductions in which 132 positions - including administrators - have been lost, cumulatively, since Senate Bill 2's inception, the district said.

What is referred to as "S2," a 2018 state aid equalization law, determined which districts were underfunded or overfunded with state aid, with adjustments in aid being applied since then.

For Freehold Regional, all this means hard budget decisions have had to be made for the past several years as state aid cuts have been absorbed, said district Superintendent Charles Sampson.

And he called upon legislators to change the state funding system.

"This wasn’t a change anyone in the Freehold Regional High School District wanted to make," Sampson said of the busing change, "but it became a necessity to close the budget gap fueled by Senate Bill 2."

"While we did have a portion of (an original) $6.7 million state aid cut deferred to the next fiscal year, the year-after-year compounding damage of S2 reductions has led us to where we are now," he added.

The district is slated to get $4,464,057 restored from that original state aid reduction.

But it will still enter the next budget cycle (2024-2025) with an anticipated $10 million shortfall, the district says.

The elimination of courtesy busing has been under consideration for several years, the district says.

Discussions were initially held before the pandemic, but changes to busing were held off.

The district will continue courtesy busing for students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) that call for transportation, district spokesperson Rebecca Policastro said Tuesday.

The district clarified what the courtesy busing cuts mean for the district that has six high schools serving over 10,000 students: Freehold Borough, Freehold Township, Manalapan, Marlboro, Colts Neck and Howell high schools. Students in Englishtown and Farmingdale are also served by the regional district.

• Only students who live farther than 2.5 miles from their school of attendance will be eligible for a bus starting this September.
• If you live 2.5 miles or less from your high school, you will be ineligible for transportation. Families will be directly notified if they are affected by the change.
• The elimination of courtesy busing aligns with state law. New Jersey mandates that transportation be provided for high school students who live over 2.5 miles from their school of attendance. The law does not require the consideration of hazardous routes in determining eligibility versus non-eligibility for transportation.
• No exceptions/considerations will be made for students deemed ineligible for transportation. Policastro, as noted above, said student IEPs requiring transportation must be followed.

In terms of how families can get their high school students to school, the district said "Each family’s situation is unique and parents must decide what works best for their family. We are alerting the community to this change as early as possible so that families have enough time to prepare for this September."

The district lays the problem at the door of the state lawmakers.

"Senate Bill 2 (S2) is what brought us to this point. The seven years phase-in of S2 cuts have been compounding - meaning the reductions this year are on top of all the cuts from prior years," the district says.

Sampson has said the district has been keeping costs low. It has the lowest per pupil cost - $14,000 - in Monmouth County, and administrative costs that are 25 percent below the average in the county, too, he said.

"We feel very confident in our efficiencies," he has said.

Under the law, the district went from $50 million in state aid in 2015, to "just north of $20 million now," Sampson has said.

At an April 27 budget hearing, the district further explained its finance problems, as it has in other forums.

And the district says its hands are tied at this point.

"There is no way to make up millions of dollars in our budget that isn’t painful. We have been and will be forced to make drastic cuts to all aspects of our operation and these cuts will be noticeable, they will be undesirable, and they will compromise the quality of the experience for current and future students," the district says.

The district has an Advocating for our Students section of its website for more information on S2 and a list of local legislators' contact information.

"Ultimately, this lies in the hands of state lawmakers. Since S2 was unveiled five years ago our district administrators have repeatedly sounded the alarm that S2 would have devastating impacts in school districts across the state," Sampson said in a statement.

He said S2 is a "failed funding formula that does not meet their constitutional responsibility to ensure students in New Jersey have a thorough and efficient education."

The district is $20 million below adequacy – the state’s own number for what the district needs to educate our students, the district says.

"There is no way for us to reach adequacy under the structure that the state currently has in place," Sampson said.

"Without intervention from the state, next year’s budget cuts could make the loss of courtesy busing small in comparison," the district says.