FREEHOLD – The Freehold Regional High School District hosted its annual public hearing on the budget. The hearing included a presentation on the budget that explained how the funds available to the district are being used. According to Superintendent Dr. Nicole Hazel, the budget for the 2026-2027 fiscal year stands at just over $246 million.
Alex Ferreira gave the budget presentation as the Assistant Superintendent for Business Administration. Before getting into the slides of the presentations, Ferreira said the Freehold Regional High School District is facing similar difficulties compared to other local districts that are making news headlines across the state for the struggles that they are going through. He also mentioned that unless there is a change to how education is supported in New Jersey, the district is going to continue to go down that road, which he believes will lead to excessive tax levy increases in the future.
The budget is expected to increase by 1.76 percent – approximately $4 million – to a total of $246.3 million. The total operating budget itself stands at around $240 million.
The tax levy is expected to rise by 4.24 percent, or just under $8 million, to a total of $196,357,036 for the 2026-2027 school year.
However, state aid is expected to decrease by $2,169,011 to 31,318,290, which is an overall decrease in state aid by 6.48 percent. This reflects a trend where the district has seen decreasing amounts of state aid over the past few years. According to the presentation given by Ferreira, state aid for the district has decreased by more than $20 million over the past 10 years. He also mentioned how this is partially due to the fact that district enrollment has gone down, meaning that the state views the district as needing less money because of it. This means that the dependency the district has on the local taxpayer is getting stronger and stronger with each passing year.
The largest increase in costs that are going into the budget includes the costs of benefits and the costs of services. The increase in costs for benefits is due to varying factors, such as rising medical costs, while the increase in costs for services is largely due to the work they are looking to do on various facilities in the district, which includes projects that Hazel has outlined over the past few Board of Education meetings.
One benefit that the district has is that instead of using the state health insurance plan, the district is self-insured, which lowers administrative costs and provides it with the capability to control its own destiny on that front.
When all the numbers are factored in, there is a hole of about $7.4 million between revenues and appropriations. The board hopes to overcome this by reducing staff, which they believe they can do through retirements and attrition rather than touching working staff, and eliminating the RAISE program, among other things.
According to Dr. Hazel, going into next year’s budget compared to this year’s, the district is allotted for a reduction of about 10 staffers.
The next Board of Education meeting is scheduled for June 18 at 7 p.m.
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