Schools have cut staff, books, computers and some are charging fees for sports and other extracurricular activities
Woodbrook Elementary School 1st grade teachers Sara Stalowski and Veronna Karnish prepare Ms. Stalowski's 1st grade classroom for the school year. Edison is one of many N.J. school districts hard hit by funding cuts. Schools are opening to a leaner new year thanks to state school aid cuts.When schools open in Sparta next week, there will be one fewer school. The cash-strapped district closed the 350-student Mohawk Avenue School to save $688,000.
Edison schools will open this week with nearly 150 fewer teachers, so high school students will be sitting in classes with as many as 30 kids. Full-day kindergarten was also eliminated.
Westfield parents will have to bring their checkbooks when their kids sign up for high school and middle school activities, including sports, drama productions and clubs.
After a rough-and-tumble spring of state aid cuts and widespread school budget defeats, parents, teachers and children are getting ready for a year like no other they have seen.
Almost everything, it seems, was on the chopping block somewhere: school librarians, elementary foreign language classes, full-day kindergarten, middle-school sports. Technology and supply budgets were cut, and teacher training programs reduced. At least one school district, Mount Olive, even furloughed its superintendent one day per week, to save about $37,500.
In many places, parents will also have to pay more.
Mount Olive High School students will need to pay $125 for parking permits this year, up from the previous $100, and the school board will begin charging groups such as Scouts or recreational sports leagues to use school buildings on weekends. The groups won’t pay rent, but now must cover facility costs such as custodians’ overtime, said superintendent Larrie Reynolds.
State-aid loss and a budget defeat added up to more than $6 million in cuts there.
"We’re going to have to get used to operating with less money," Reynolds said.
In Sparta, "subscription bus service," costing around $500 per child — the board has not yet determined the actual amount — will replace "courtesy busing" that once transported children who live too close to school to qualify for a regular ride to school, but on roads that are unsafe to walk.
Sparta also started high school activity fees, nicknamed "pay to play," ranging up to $325 per season for sports, cheerleading or marching band.
Maureen Sharpe, president of the Sparta High School Parent-Teacher Organization, said she and her husband are figuring out whether their sons will be able to play sports.
"I have two in high school, they both play sports, it’s going to add up," she said. "They’re going to college in a few years; do I want to spend thousands of dollars now? At the same time, they need to put it on their college applications."
Woodbrook Elementary School 1st grade teachers Sara Stalowski and Veronna Karnish prepare Ms. Stalowski's 1st grade classroom for the school year Thursday morning. Edison is one of many NJ school districts hard hit by funding cuts. Schools are opening to a leaner new year thanks to state school aid cuts. Gov. Chris Christie in March sent school districts reeling with sweeping state school aid cuts, totaling $820 million, doled out in amounts equal to as much as 5 percent of each district’s overall budget.
The cuts, which he said were the result of "incredibly difficult choices" needed to close a $10.7 billion deficit, were intended to spread the pain around the state’s nearly 600 school districts. Many, mostly wealthier suburban districts like Westfield and Chatham, saw most of their state aid disappear. Some 59 districts, including Livingston, Millburn and Berkeley Heights, lost all of their state funding.
Large urban districts suffered bigger dollar amounts — $42.6 million was cut in Newark, for example, and $14 million in Elizabeth — but because they receive much more state aid, their cuts were lower as a percentage of state aid.
Christie encouraged teacher unions to take wage freezes, and urged voters to defeat school budgets in places where they did not.
Many districts are heading back to school after a double whammy of aid cuts and budget defeats. Edison is one of the largest suburban school districts in the state, with about 14,800 students and 17 schools. The district lost $9.7 million in state aid, then $6.5 million more after the budget went down. Property taxes will still increase $190 for the average home assessed at $176,400, said interim superintendent Ronald Bolandi.
"Between the state aid and the budget cuts from the mayor and council, that’s an enormous hit," he said. "We have no money to buy anything new in technology. We have no building money. We are still laying off 150 teachers."
The teachers union there struck an agreement with the board in early August, providing salary givebacks that saved the jobs of 123 paraprofessionals.
"In light of the governor’s rhetoric that education associations aren’t doing anything to help their people, this one did," Bolandi said.
Still, cuts are heavy.
Middle-school sports were eliminated, and middle and high school clubs were reduced by half. Class sizes throughout the schools are expected to rise. "High school could be up to 30. Probably will be," Bolandi said.
Mary Ellen Martin, whose younger daughter will be a sophomore at Edison’s J.P. Stevens High School, worries about crowded classrooms.
"I just don’t think it’s going to be a good thing," she said.
A volunteer who chairs the school’s Project Graduation party for seniors — which last year had to start charging admission of $30 because fundraising efforts that kept it free for students dried up — Martin said some of the teachers her daughter had last year are being laid off.
In Westfield, voters supported the budget, but the state cut $4.2 million, or 90 percent of the district’s state aid.
The district instituted activity fees of up to $125 per child for participation in high school and middle-school sports, drama or musicals, as a way to raise $184,000 and maintain programs. A committee of parents backed the idea.
As in most districts now charging for clubs, membership in academic societies, such as the National Honor Society, is free.
But Westfield also had to cut about 30 jobs, from teachers to custodians. It can’t buy library books or new computers this year. The district reduced its new-teacher institute, which formerly lasted a week, to one day of training. There are fewer new teachers to train than in years past, however.
"It certainly is going to be difficult, but we have to focus on the students who are coming through our doors," superintendent Margaret Dolan said. "Whether we have fewer supplies or class sizes are larger, we have to make it work."
In Sparta, where the district also had to come up with the money to open a newly expanded high school, parents face steep high school student activity fees: $325 per season for sports, cheerleading or marching band; $200 to perform in a play; and $25 to belong to any number of clubs.
The district’s elementary and middle-school sports teams and clubs were cut, and Mohawk Avenue School, an older brick building with white columns, was closed for students. Administrative offices will stay, and the board is negotiating to rent out the rest of the building.
Sparta is also cutting 79 positions, including more than 40 teachers.
"When we got down to making choices, there were few choices left," board president Jennifer Dericks said.
Sparta school superintendent Thomas Morton said he believes realization of all of the cuts will hit parents once the school year starts.
"It’s all theoretical at this point," he said.
But with budgets struck and the school year arriving, educators there and in other towns say they will concentrate on doing their best to educate kids.
"That’s the challenge, to make the tone positive now," Morton said. "The cuts are all made. We’re asking staff to move ahead. We have a good school district. We hit a bump in the road, but we’re moving ahead."
Reynolds said in Mount Olive, despite everything, student achievement will be "sky-high."
"From the most important perspective, our schools are in very good shape, and headed in the right direction," he said.