JACKSON – Superintendent Nicole Pormilli recently testified before the Senate Budget Committee Hearings to urge for change to the state’s S-2 funding formula and to clarify why the school district needs to seek a second loan to balance its budget for the next school year.
S-2 is the name of a law that took state aid away from some districts like Jackson and sent it to other school districts. The cuts started several years ago and get deeper every year.
Pormilli said the state aid reductions for the previous six years totaled $18 million, “forcing us to request a $13 million loan from the Department of Education for the current 2023-2024 school year.”
“We are currently awaiting distributions from that loan in April, as we will no longer be able to pay our bills by May,” she said.
She said that for the 2024-2025 school year, “we were bracing for a $806,460 S-2 aid cut and learned we would instead be cut by $4.4 million – which is 15% of our current level of state aid. This means Jackson will have lost $22.4 million in total over the last seven years.”
“This significant cut will force us to seek another loan from the DOE to support our 24-25 budget as making any additional cuts to our staff or programs will make it impossible to provide the students of Jackson with a thorough and efficient education,” Pormilli added.
She noted that a Department of Education (DOE) fiscal monitor, Carole Morris, has been assigned to the Jackson School District and that as a condition of the DOE loan, “the district is required to pay the monitor’s salary.”
Since S-2 was put into effect, the school district has had to cut 215 positions across all departments including administration. Pormilli said, “the profound loss of teachers has resulted in increased class sizes.” Kindergarten classes have an average of 20 pupils while grades 1-5 average between 23 to 26. Grades 6-8 average between 25 to 28 and grades 9-12 have a class population of 25 to 30 on average.
“We have made cuts to athletics and co-curricular clubs, reduced assistant coaches, reduced high school electives and Advanced Placement classes, cut all capital improvement, and are unable to continue to maintain our 13 school buildings,” Pormilli added.
One of the reasons for changing the state aid, lawmakers had said, was declining enrollment.
However, she told the lawmakers present, “state aid cuts far exceed enrollment decreases. Since the onset of S-2 our enrollment has decreased 15.5% – while our state aid has decreased 50.1%. Our last state enrollment report showed a loss of 86 students between 2022 and 2023 – this resulted in a $4.4 million reduction in state aid.”
While the district’s transportation aid has been frozen since the onset of S-2 at $601,355, neighboring districts receive millions in transportation aid.
A graphic projected on screen during a recent Board of Education meeting illustrates the impact that the state’s S-2 State Aid funding formula has had on the school district in recent years. (Photo by Bob Vosseller)
Pormilli said, “we have advocated for the Department of Education to at least fully fund us for transportation. In fact, our State Aid Notice received on February 29 indicates that the calculated Transportation Aid for 24-25 should be $7,735,206.”
The state calculates an “Adequacy Budget” for every New Jersey district. This is their projection for the necessary funding level to provide a “thorough and efficient education” to every pupil in that district.
“For the current 2023-2024 school year we were $8,583,278 below adequacy and for 2024-2025 the Jackson School District will be $23,783,329 below adequacy,” the superintendent added.
“We have always gone to the taxpayer for the full 2% tax levy increase. Meanwhile, inflation has impacted every area of our existence far beyond 2%,” she said.
Pormilli noted that in addition to inflation and cost increases, “two unique circumstances exist in our district that require significant financial support and that have increased tremendously over the past 7 years our aid has been frozen.”
Non-public students requiring transportation has grown from 655 students in 2017 to 5,584 students (anticipated for 24-25) – an increase of 752% in seven years. “This equates to approximately $4 million in our 24-25 budget,” Pormilli stressed to the legislators.
Pormilli also mentioned that “English Language Learners (ELL) for whom we need to allocate resources have also increased tremendously, from 168 students in 2017 to 940 students (anticipated for 24-25) – an increase of 459% in seven years.”
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