Gov. Murphy Responds To Proposed Middletown School Closures

MIDDLETOWN, NJ — On Tuesday, Gov. Phil Murphy was asked about closing three schools in Middletown, as a solution to close a $10-million deficit in next year's budget.

The governor responded the issue is "personal," because he lives in Middletown.

"You don't willy-nilly talk about closing the school without a lot of emotion," said Murphy, according to NJ101.5. "And so this stuff's hard. The math does not lie."

"The governor gets to make the math!" state Sen. Declan O'Scanlon (R) retorted Thursday.

Under Murphy, the state of New Jersey dramatically changed how it funds school districts, first under the School Funding Reform Act of 2008. NJ school funding was then further changed in 2017 with "S2," a controversial piece of legislation that reduced aid to certain school districts, while increasing aid to other districts that Murphy said had been underfunded.

Many districts that lost aid happened to be large school districts in the suburbs.

Like Middletown, the Toms River school district has lost millions in state funding in the past seven years. Last March, Gov. Murphy told CBS News that for Toms River Regional and other districts that experienced deep aid cuts, the solution was consolidation.

"You got three high schools, you should have two. You have five middle schools, you should have four," Murphy told the Toms River school board last March. "Those are hard discussions to have inside of a community, and I get that."

Just Close Schools, Murphy Says To Toms River, Districts With Aid Cuts (March 2024)

On Wednesday, O'Scanlon, who represents Middletown in Trenton, said he plans to introduce a bill that would restore funding to school districts that experienced a net loss in state aid from 2018 to 2025. If the bill becomes law, it would essentially eliminate the six percent cap the state put on aid increases. Middletown would be eligible for $2 million additional in state aid. It is currently limited to $840,000 due to the six-percent cap.

Is it enough to keep the three Middletown schools from closing? Board leaders Frank Capone and Jacqueline Tobacco declined to answer.

"It would give them a lot of breathing room. It would give them nearly 3 million more dollars," said O'Scanlon.

If the six percent cap is lifted, other neighboring school districts would get more money, too: Asbury Park schools would get $2 million more, $400,000 more for Eatontown, $800,000 for Monmouth Regional and almost a million more for Ocean Township, said O'Scanlon.

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