Over $1.6 million in State Aid Withheld from Bernards Schools

Bernards Township will be out $1,634,388 in state aid money this year due to a recent executive order from Governor Christie.

Christie announced this week an order freezing state aid to school districts which have excess surplus funds. Bernards invests surplus funds and uses them toward future budgets, which means the state's decision to withhold just under the schools $1.7 million surplus in aid money could directly affect the 2010-11 school budget.

Bernards Superintendent Valerie Goger was busy working on the budgets and unable to comment other than the Board of Education is working on the issue and preparing a presentation for Monday's Board of Education meeting at 7 p.m. in the William Annin Middle School auditorium.

The rational for the freeze in state aid was given in Gov. Christie's budget speech on Feb. 11. Christie said, "New Jersey is in a state of financial crisis. Our state's budget has been left in a shambles and requires immediate action to achieve balance."

The governor said that New Jersey faces a $2 billion budget shortfall for the current year, and "by far the biggest category of spending we will need to cut, however, is that for programs which actually have merit, and in most cases make sense, but which we simply cannot afford at this time."

Christie chose to reduce school aid in a manner that no school would have aid withheld in amounts greater than the school's surplus funds, rather than reducing aid evenly across the board. Bernards received the fifth largest state aid reduction in Somerset County behind Bridgewater-Raritan ($4 million), North Plainfield Borough ($2.4 million), Montgomery ($1.9 million) and Somerville Borough ($1.9 million).