BRICK – At the recent Brick Township Board of Education meeting, members approved a resolution submitting a tentative $162 million budget for the 2022-23 school year.
As per state law, New Jersey school districts must present their tentative budgets to the executive county superintendents as soon as possible.
According to the resolution, the $162,098,698 tentative budget will include a tax levy of $118,333,977.
“As I stated at last month’s Board meeting, our budget is very simple in that we don’t have much control over revenue sources. Our revenue can only go up $2.3 million with the mandated 2% tax levy cap,” Superintendent Thomas Farrell said at the March 15 Board of Education meeting.
Included in the 2022-23 budget is $142,790,15 of total general fund expenditures. Compared to the previous year, it is a decrease of about 3%.
The resolution states that the district is expecting $18.7 million in special revenues for 2022-23, a $7.2 million increase from 2021-22.
This tentative budget report was declared days after Governor Phil Murphy proposed a spending plan that would increase funding to New Jersey public schools by $650 million.
However, this was after the state Department of Education said the district was facing a $4.7 million cut from state aid for the 2022-23 school year.
The district is set to receive $17,174,293 in aid, which is over $4 million less compared to the previous year of $21.9 million. This will be the fifth year of state aid cuts due to the S-2 bill.
The law states that those districts who are not paying their “fair share” of property taxes will have their state aid slashed. Local towns have been fighting to get this funding back.
Over these five years, the Brick Township School District has lost a total of over $20 million in aid.
Since the $162 million budget for the 2022-23 school year is tentative, the Brick Board of Education will be holding a full presentation and public hearing on the budget on April 28. The district must submit their final adoption by May 14.
