Toms River School Board Set For New Vote On 2025-26 Budget

TOMS RIVER, NJ — The Toms River Regional Board of Education is holding a hearing on the district's 2025-26 school budget following the board's committee meetings on Wednesday.

The budget hearing is listed on the school board's website, along with an announcement of a change in venue for the board committee meetings.

Both meetings will be held in the media center at Toms River High School North on Old Freehold Road.

The committee meetings begin at 5:30 p.m. and the budget meeting is set for 7 p.m., starting with an executive session estimated at 15 minutes, according to the agenda.

The board is slated to take another vote on the budget, which it rejected two weeks ago in a unanimous vote over a proposed 12.9 percent increase in the district's tax levy.

The rejected budget of $293 million included $271 million in general fund spending — the part that funds the day-to-day educational activities of the district — along with debt service. The overall tax levy was $222,945,373, up from $193,201,141 for the 2024-25 budget. Those figures include the debt service payments from the bonds for the $147 million in capital projects throughout the district approved by voters in January 2019.

It included an anticipated $1 million in additional aid from the state Department of Education that would be received in exchange for the district increasing the tax levy by $21.3 million, Business Administrator William Doering said. That $21.3 million increase accounts for 15.4 percent of the rise in the levy. A decrease in the debt service due to bonds being paid off is reducing the impact of the increase to 12.9 percent.

The April 30 vote was the second straight year the board rejected the district's proposed budget. In July 2024, when the board rejected the budget, the state Department of Education certified the tentative budget the district had submitted, in the process cementing a 9.9 percent tax increase.