The South Orange-Maplewood School District's General Fund Budget has grown over the last three and a half decades from $42.2 million in 1994 to almost $174 million for the current 2026-27 school year. Almost all of that increase has been funded from the local property tax levy, which this year totaled $149.6 million, compared to 1994 when the local tax levy was $36.7 million.

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In addition to the tax levy for the operating budget, local taxpayers shoulder nearly four-fifths of the burden of the debt service tax levy on the current $175 million of outstanding school district debt, reflecting the bond issues from 2019-2024 which financed nearly $180 million of facilities work.

 

Notwithstanding this level of funding, our school district, like many other New Jersey districts, struggles to make ends meet and faces an annual effort to reduce expenditures to match available revenues. The Superintendent has been warning of a “Fiscal Cliff” and has now declared we’ve fallen off it.

 

The fundamental challenge is that our ability to increase the local tax levy is limited by state law to an annual growth rate of 2%, while many of our required expenditures grow at rates out of our control, including health care premiums (which increased nearly 30% for this year’s budget, notwithstanding the fact the Board opted out of the State Health Benefits Plan and chose to self-insure), energy costs, transportation, and more. 

 

Were we and other districts to succeed in raising the cap to 3% or even 4% (the level prior to 2004), we would likely face major resistance from local taxpayers.

 

Many say the state aid system is unfair and broken. Dealing with that in detail is beyond the scope of this position statement, but it is important to note that our current General Fund state aid only totals $13.6 million, a mere 7.8% of our total General Fund revenue. A significant percentage increase in our state aid, while desirable, would not change the overall picture much.

 

The reality is that we must live within our means, avoid decisions that will drive major cost increases in the out-years, and subject the entire budget to Board and public scrutiny by January and early February, so that decisions on what to cut and what to preserve (and the likely side-effects of each decision) are subjected to the give and take of public discussion.

 

It was helpful to see Board adoption at the September 24 meeting of a budget process and calendar that promises a clear picture of what’s confronting us by January. That won’t avoid the hard decisions we will need to make but will enable a more rational process of making them.

 

We need to avoid the temptation to seize upon one or another area of expenditure as the primary scapegoat for why our spending is so high or what cuts will solve all our problems. Every aspect of school district expenditure is important to someone and cutting the level of service will undoubtedly have an adverse impact on someone.

 

I am still learning the budget and will avoid making premature proposals on what to cut and instead mention those areas of expenditure that require full analysis to enable rational board decision-making.

 

For starters, even in the face of a large shortfall of projected revenue to fund needed programs and services, we must ask, for each and every district activity, from math instruction to facilities maintenance to delivery of special education services, whether we are spending enough to fund the minimum required level of resources. We will inevitably decide that we cannot fund everything we need and want to do at the level required, but we need to make those decisions in an informed way, rather than just rolling over last year’s resource levels as next year’s targets.

 

In considering each major area of spending and where cost reductions may be possible, we need to look both at the level of resources needed and alternate ways of providing those resources that might cost more or less money and yield more or less effectiveness. This is true of busing and paraprofessionals classroom staffing levels.

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Revenue

 

I’ve spoken with people about creative ways to increase revenue, including selling advertising space on district buses and at athletic events, renting out district facilities and sending delegations to lobby our legislators in Trenton for more aid. While I welcome the district making the effort, it is important to remember that none of these is likely to yield more than tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue and our annual revenue shortfall is more like $8 million.

 

The sad truth is that we cannot continue to do everything that we’ve been doing at the level we’ve been doing it. The best we can hope for is that the Board makes reasoned decisions with full community input after reviewing full and timely information and analysis from the Administration.

 

Suggestions for Reducing Costs

 

The budget process will begin before the winners of this November’s election are sworn in, so I would like to offer the following thoughts as input:

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• It is imperative to restore librarian staffing to a minimum of one FTE per school, as essential to student literacy.
   

• It  is crucial to budget for a market-competitive wage-level for paraprofessionals, however they are sourced, to ensure a competent pool of applicants and staff stability.
   

• The district must seriously analyze the savings to be had from buying its own buses and decide how many it needs to allow for the 6 to 8-month lead time for delivery by next September.
   

• We must ensure that we are scheduling our elementary schools in a way that requires the minimum number of class sections in each grade, while preserving current class size maximums. Triple-I, uniquely, enables us to do this with maximum efficiency.
   

• We must ensure that our scheduling at the middle and high school level has every teacher working at their contractual workload of 5 courses, and that minimum class sizes at CHS reduce the number of class sections needed across all core and elective subjects, while preserving our rich offerings. Accomplishing this requires more effective scheduling as well as increasing the number of teachers certified to teach a range of courses.
   

• We should consider the use of online courses to satisfy student interests, whether we can offer them for course credit or not. The quality of free online offerings from the best colleges in the country continues to grow. Most CHS students earn 140 credits during their four years, while the district only requires 120 credits to graduate. College recruiters and prospective employers will be just as impressed by course completion of a free offering from Stanford or MIT, even if there are no credits associated with it.
   

• We must carefully review the entirety of technology spending which has gone unchecked and unexplored for several years.
   

• We must scrutinize security spending, which also appears to have gone unquestioned and by some accounts is in the millions of dollars.
   

• We must analyze which aspects of our special education programming might  be improved to enable bringing some out-of-district students back into district.
   

• We should scrutinize what staffing and scheduling practices lead to substantial amounts of overtime pay.
   

I don’t pretend to have all the answers. What I’ve listed above has been compiled from the input of dozens of people I’ve spoken with. I welcome the input of others with respect to budget spending and encourage all parents to pay close attention to the budget process already getting under way.
 

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