Schools

Proposed 2012-13 School Budget On Monday Agenda

With increased state aid figures, Bernards and Somerset Hills school districts due to introduce 2012-13 budgets next week.

A proposed school budget for 2012-13 that will maintain all programs and add some new staff at the growing and in classes with large numbers of students is scheduled to be presented at Monday night's meeting, said Schools Business Administrator Nick Markarian.

And, this year, for the first time, township voters won't be asked for their approval on the following year's school budget.

Since the to switch the annual school election to November, new state regulations won't require a vote unless the new budget exceeds a 2-percent cap on local school tax increases — something that school officials have vowed won't happen.

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The budget document expected to be introduced Monday must be approved by the county before March 22, before it can be considered for a final vote by the Board of Education, Markarian said on Friday.

The school board then is likely to hold a public hearing on the 2012-13 school budget at its March 26 meeting, Markarian said.

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After that, the board can vote to adopt a final budget, he said. The budget adopted by the school board last spring, and then approved by voters late last April, was about $89 million.

Markarian said the budget to be presented on Monday includes this year's promised state aid of about $3 million, a $655,733 increase from last year's state aid figure of $2.4 million. Those figures do not include state reimbursement for debt payments, he said.

The $3 million, a 27.25 percent increase from the current school year's state aid, was announced on Thursday by the governor and state Department of Education.

The state aid figure is not as high as the $5.4 million that the Bernards Township school school district had been told it would receive for the 2009-10 school year, Markarian said.

However, in February 2010, following the election of Gov. Chris Christie, the state withheld more than $1.6 million of that amount after the new governor announced that aid payments would be frozen to school districts with surplus funds. Anticipated state aid payment of almost $1.7 million were then withheld for the next several months, Markarian said.

The rational for the freeze in state aid was given in Gov. Christie's budget speech in February 2010, when the then-new governor 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."

For the 2010-11 school budget, the district's state aid plummeted to less than $1 million, with unallocated state to some districts considered to be wealthier — including the Somerset Hills regional school district — cut to zero.

Aid figure, budget introduction date for the Somerset Hills regional school district

According to the state Department of Education, state aid for the Somerset Hills School District, including Bernardsville, Far Hills and Peapack-Gladstone, with students from Bedminster attending the high school on a tuition-paying basis, will be $842,370 for next year.

That figure is a 23.7 percent increase over the $680,775 allocated to Somerset Hills for the 2011-12 school year, according to the state education department.

The Somerset Hills Board of Education is scheduled to introduce the proposed 2012-13 school budget at its meeting scheduled for 7:30 p.m. next Wednesday, Feb. 29, at Bernards High School, said that school district's business administrator, Nancy Lee Hunter.


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