BRICK – The local government and the school district are separate entities, each with their own leadership structure and funding, but sometimes they cross over as when Mayor John G. Ducey shared some school news during the January 25 council meeting.
The council had to authorize the school district to be part of a lawsuit against the NJ Department of Education (NJDOE) to release a school funding formula that determines how much state aid each district would receive based on “adjustment aid.”
In 2018 NJ State Senate Bill S-2 was passed that reappropriated the adjustment aid to about 100 NJ school districts considered to be overfunded, which includes Brick. The adjustment aid was cut here to a cumulative total of $42 million over a seven-year period.
“There is supposedly a school funding formula, and we have asked for that,” said the mayor. “The school has asked for that, the government, the council, myself, we did resolutions, we did letters, asking for that school funding formula, and got turned down over and over again.”
He said the state is always coming up with new laws for opening up public records, but they always exempt themselves. “Everybody else out there has to give up everything, but [the state] doesn’t have to give up anything.”
Many other New Jersey towns and school districts have been asking for the funding formula, with no success since the state said it was proprietary.
“That’s absolutely ridiculous because it’s taxpayer money that paid for it,” Mayor Ducey said. “Nothing’s proprietary – it’s an open record, so we had to sue them.”
On January 21, Superior Court Judge Robert T. Lougy ordered the NJ Department of Education to hand over the formula and all data that was used to tally each school district’s state funding, which could provide answers about how tax dollars are distributed to about 600 school districts across the state.
In addition to Brick, other school districts that filed the lawsuit include Toms River, Lacey, Jackson, Freehold Regional and Manalapan-Englishtown Regional District.
“If they’re not giving it to us, they’re probably either not following it, it doesn’t exist, or something worse,” the mayor said. “Hopefully, it’s none of those things, but now we’re all going to find out.”
“The state of New Jersey and right here in Brick Township where they have been cutting our school funding year after year after year through S-2, they’re not going to be able to do that anymore,” he said.
During a recent Board of Education meeting, board president Stephanie Wohlrab said Judge Lougy ruled that the NJDOE “must produce all operative and responsive coding language.”
The DOE had refused to produce the data that underlies the SFRA (School Funding Reform Act) calculations, she said. The data exists in workspace folders, and the judge ruled that the DOE is required to share the workspace folder and data, if they have it.
“Finally, the judge decided that since we’re the prevailing parties, the school districts are entitled to have their attorney fees paid by the Department of Education,” Wohlrab said.
The next council meeting will be on Tuesday February 8 at 7 p.m.
