$9.8 Million School Budget Adopted

Photo by Chris Lundy

  LAKEHURST – Board of Education members unanimously approved their 2021-2022 spending plan for the borough’s school district.

  Taxes to be raised for the general fund are $1,246,203. Debt service payments will be $105,040. So the total taxes will be $1,351,243.

  The total budget will be $9,836,527.

  Business Administrator Barry Parliman said that state aid for the district had been reduced. He said it had gone from $1 million to $450,000 last year.

  “The tax levy went up by $24,435. Our impact revenue aid went down by $100,000. That is partially due to student count and partially due to cuts in the federal government,” Parliman said.

  He added, “this is the first time in two years we’ve used any budgeted fund balance (surplus). We are getting back on our feet. Due to COVID it left some expenditures unused. We also had to use some money left over from this year to make this budget.”

  Parliman also said this year $75,284 were left over in the preschool accounts “which helped build next year’s teacher salaries and extra things that need to be done in that wing and support personnel. That wing needs to be humidified and there are things that go into it.”

  He noted Manchester tuition for “our 8th grade graduating class went up $253,111. That eats up a lot of what we appropriated out of surplus. The only way we accommodated the increases was to accommodate decreases in our accounts.”

  Parliman also said the spending plan had been reviewed by the county superintendent having gone through “rigorous standards.” He said the budget does not include the next round of coronavirus funding by the state. “The only thing included is $95,000 and $42,000 from this past year. Next year’s is not appropriated yet.”

  The district is expecting around $400,000 which is regulated under strict guidelines. “We have a lot of those components in place,” Parliman reminded the Board.

STEM Program

  Superintendent Loren Fuhring introduced April Boatner-Allen, a representative from the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. “We are piloting a STEM program for teens for our 5th graders. It is a very intensive program.”

  “The program would allow our 5th graders to be on base for 25 hours for all types of activities. It is funded through the base and grants. It is working in Burlington County right now but it will be growing. If it is a success and we know it will be because we are going to make that happen, it will go with them through high school,” Fuhring added.

  She said the program could lead to internship and “all kinds of opportunities in every field – engineering, medical and others and it is definitely something we are really excited about.”

  Allen said it was “an emerging program in which the 5th graders will come one day a week with assigned instruction. They will build rockets and the idea is if we catch them at 5th grade and we start to track them all the way through they will become leaders and we will have a resurgence in American pride in our sciences and mathematics. We are seeking through grants to fund their transportation. The only thing we need is the teachers and for them to bring their lunches. That is our goal,” Allen added.

  Allen said, “we’ve been meeting with school districts. We will be meeting with representatives from the Department of Defense at the end of May and they will give us the green light to forge ahead with this.”

  She added that the goal was to renovate a building on the Lakehurst side of the joint base that would be used for this program.

Baseball, Soccer Fields

  It was noted during the meeting that renovation work had been done on the baseball and soccer fields to prepare them for play. Board members were unsure if there were enough participants involved at present to form leagues for either sport but hoped that would happen in the near future.