Local Schools Get Big State Aid Increases

The West Morris Regional and Washington Township School districts received a welcomed financial surprise Thursday afternoon when the New Jersey Department of Education released its financial aid numbers to the state’s school districts.

For the regional district, aid came in the form of $4,369,441, a 7.7-percent increase over last year’s $4,056,834. The 2011-12 state aid was originally $3,598,240, but an which the board decided to use toward class size relief and save for the 2012-13 school year.

Of the additional monies the district received in July, $274,304 was reserved to use toward the next year’s budget. That brings the total additional funds to $586,911.

The district’s business administrator, Doug Pechenac, said the big strategy is to alleviate class size in both schools by putting additional funds toward adding a sixth period to teacher’s schedules.

“Rather than adding personnel, we can pay teachers more to instruct an extra class period,” Pechenac said. “Class size has been an issue since we had such a large teacher reduction a few years ago.”

Pechenac said the board’s finance committee was currently in the position of working toward the 2-percent tax levy cap during the budget creation process, and the additional funds will most certainly help keep that figure down.

“We can do a lot of things with the money,” Pechenac said. “We can put it toward class size relief or tax payer relief. I’m certainly not complaining about it.”

The regional school board is expected to vote on a tentative budget at its next meeting, scheduled for Monday, Feb. 27.

The Washington Township K-8 school district received a total of $7,997,562, a 5.6-percent increase over last year’s original $7,166,698. The district also received an , which brought its total aid up to $7,576,263.

The board decided in July, however, to save all of the $409,565 for the 2012-13 school year budget.

Business administrator Liz George was not immediately available to comment. The board’s finance committee is scheduled to meet Thursday, Feb. 23.