Other districts suffering big budget cuts
As the group of stories in this week’s edition of the Sentinel shows, opting for Interdistrict Public School Choice and expanding it early has proved a financial blessing for the Ocean City School District.
And as surrounding districts struggle with declining state aid, forcing them to make serious cuts to programs and staff and/or substantially hike taxes to maintain their level of education, it also has shown how the state aid funding formula is broken.
The OCSD jumped on School Choice relatively soon after the state Department of Education approved it, getting the blessing at the time from the Cape May County schools superintendent.
In just the last 10 years, School Choice aid has brought in more than $27 million. As school officials note in the Sentinel stories, that means being able to maintain the classes and programs students and their families have come to expect.
The fact of the early start meant that in 2015, when the state Department of Education put limits on the number of districts that could take part and the number of students districts could accept, Ocean City was already one of the top three districts in the state.
Only 0.4 percent of public school students in the state take part in School Choice, or around 5,200. Ocean City accepts around 194 a year.
The Choice aid has been steady, averaging around $2.7 million a year. At the same time, other state aid has grown from just over $1 million to almost $1.6 million in Ocean City.
Granted, Ocean City hasn’t received a lot of non-Choice aid, but neighboring districts have and as it has been cut and cut again, they have had to deal with the consequences.
The Somers Point School District lost more than $4 million in state aid since 2018-19. Mainland Regional High School lost $1.4 million for next year alone. Upper Township has lost nearly $6 million since 2016-17.
That has meant a lot of cutting in those districts.
Some of the cuts were restored when Gov. Phil Murphy approved giving the districts 45 percent of what was lost for 2024-25 back, and allowed them to exceed the 2 percent tax levy cap, but that may be a one-time reprieve. The districts were able to restore some of what was cut, but they don’t know what will happen next year.
On top of that, they all raised taxes substantially, never the most popular move for taxpayers, especially if nothing is done to change the school aid funding formula going forward, putting the districts in a bind next year as well.
A sad truth is that these districts have dropping student populations, a factor in state aid formulas, but that is true for the Ocean City School District as well. However, due to School Choice, it may be relatively immune.
As we’ve noted in this space before, something must change in the state aid funding formula. There also must be the hope that the state doesn’t decide to reneg on its commitment to School Choice, which would make the OCSD join the districts being hurt financially.