BRICK – The Brick Township Board of Education has adopted a $171 million budget for the 2025-26 school year with an increase in the property tax levy.
According to the district, the total budget is $171,207,418 which includes $134,767,772 to be raised by property taxes – a 3.14% tax levy. This is an increase of $4,161,475 from the preliminary budget that was introduced in March. The board sought approval to increase the tax levy above the 2% cap through the New Jersey Department of Education’s Tax Levy Incentive Program.
The budget includes cutting seven full-time positions, Superintendent Thomas Farrell said. Farrell noted that these eliminated positions expected to be absorbed through retirements and resignations.
For class sizes, the average at the elementary level for the 2025-26 school year is about 24 students per class, said Susan McNamara, Director of Planning, Research & Evaluation. For the middle school level they range from a low of 25 to a high of 29 students. At the High school level, the average number of students per core subject area will be around 27 students.
In Brick Schools, 22.5% of the student population fall under special education, Director of Curriculum Alyce Anderson said.
According to Farrell, the state is now calculating special education aid based on enrollment instead of a census-based calculation. However, Brick was capped at 6%, receiving only $871,175 in additional aid due to the new funding formula.
In addition, the district was awarded a $7.2 million grant for preschool expansion aid. This will support 36 preschool classrooms for 2025-26.
The school board’s vice president Mike Mesmer, who chairs the board’s finance committee, noted that the district wanted to be fair and not increase taxes to an extreme amount.
“With this tax increase, it really was a similar situation to last year. But we do have to be fiscally responsible as well,” Mesmer said. “I think the number we came up with, a 3.14% total increase, is slightly over the break-even point. We’re protecting all teaching positions. We’re ensuring that class sizes will not increase – there is potential for them to go down.”
Brick is one of many school districts who suffered under S-2, a law that lowered state aid for some districts and sent it elsewhere. The budget that was introduced is for the first school year without S-2.
Under Gov. Phil Murphy’s proposed budget, the Brick School District is receiving a total of $15,390,753 in state aid, which is $871,175 or 6% more than the previous year. With new state regulations, no district was allowed an increase of more than 6%.
Mesmer stated that the district is planning to get into litigation with the state over its funding formula, which they could potentially gain up to $3 million in funding that is owed for this school year alone.
“We factored everything in to this decision,” Mesmer said. “We felt it was fair to protect the teachers and the students while also not killing the taxpayers, because there are people that are struggling. We can’t just raise taxes a million percent and say everything is fine.”
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