The Lakewood Public School district is proposed to see an increase of $1.9 million for the 2023-2024 school year, according to new information from the New Jersey Department of Education.
The proposed increase in aid, which would bring Lakewood’s total public school aid to $26,575,697, is a small part of an overall $834 million increase in K-12 education statewide, included in Governor Phil Murphy’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2024.
However, despite many school statewide seeing massive amounts of addition aid, other local school districts in Ocean County will see their funding severely reduced.
In Jackson, the proposed budget has the district facing a $6.3 million cut, while the Toms River Regional School District would see the largest cut among Ocean and Monmouth counties with a proposed $14.4 million reduction – a staggering 32% cut from the current year.
Other districts in the area receiving less aid include -$2.5 million for Brick and -$1.7 million for Howell.
Legislators representing districts receiving the cuts, slammed the Governor.
“Governor Murphy’s massive school aid cuts to Brick and Toms River are malicious and unnecessary when he’s building a $10 billion budget surplus and putting $1 billion more into schools in other parts of the state,” Senator Jim Holzapfel, whose district includes Toms River, said in a statement.
“I look at the governor’s proposed budget and I see plans to spend other people’s money on pet projects and special interests while neglecting the obligation to provide a thorough and efficient education for all New Jersey students,” Assemblyman Alex Sauickie, whose district includes Jackson, said.
“Governor Murphy doesn’t even have to touch the surplus to fund our schools, yet he refuses to do it. Our children’s education is too important to be further jeopardized by Trenton political games and reckless spending policies.”
The cuts to many school districts in the area date back to 2018 when a new state law, known as S-2, realigned the school funding formula for the entire state.
What are the chances that the cuts and increases would line up similar to an election map from Murphy’s election?
So what does that break down to for each student if this is truly public school funding and not private. 1.9 million ~6700 students, an increase of $280/student. While Toms River lost 14.4 million, a reduction of ~$94/student.
If you look at the new total values. Lakewood with a new budget of 25.57 million or $3,927/student. While Toms Rivers budget decreased to 30.98 million or $2,002/student.
Something doesnt seem right. Lakewood students, almost 1/3 less than Toms River students are getting almost 2x/student for the budget. While I am sure the household income for each public school student comes into play it doesnt seem to make sense. No child left behind so we will just make all of them struggle!
So glad my kids arent in public school or private for that matter any more.
First of all what the schools of today is not like when I went to school they are teaching kids garbage!!!! They are not allowed to let kids write in cursive handwriting and cellphones we didn’t have and the schools and the kids do these days it’s disgusting!!!!! And we saluted the flag when I went to school