News from Lakewood and beyond

Schools Cash Crunch

O

ver 100 people packed the Lakewood School Board meeting last Wednesday, held in the spacious Lakewood High School auditorium to accommodate what was expected to be a large, irate crowd.

Parents and teachers were in attendance, concerned over the closure and sale of school buildings and the $39 million hole in BOE finances. Teachers wanted to be sure they would be paid and not laid off; parents wanted to know that their kids’ services would not be slashed.

Welcome to the latest iteration of a long-running crisis. The Lakewood Board of Education, which runs the public schools within the township, is facing a severe funding shortfall — $39 million on an overall budget of $260 million, or about 15 percent. The district’s current cash reserves will run out in mid-May — before the end of the fiscal year, on June 30 — by which time board members hope the state will approve loans for the missing money. If it doesn’t, Lakewood’s public school services, including transportation and special education funding used heavily by the frum community, will shut down.

Finger-Pointing

We’re not overly concerned,” BOE business administrator Kevin Campell tells Mishpacha. “This is kind of how the state of New Jersey does business with us. They know we legitimately need the money, and release it to us in the form of loans, kind of in dribs and drabs.”

Above its standard subsidy to every school district, the state gives Lakewood a repayable annual loan. This year’s shortfall was $104 million, but when the state loan commitment came in on February 14, it included a promise for only $65 million.

A chunk of that money, $17 million, is earmarked to repay loans from previous years — the accumulated total of which is approaching $200 million.

The New Jersey State Department of Education insists the Lakewood public school district receives enough money to balance its books, and the reason for its deficit is overspending and mismanagement. A state monitor has been appointed to snoop on Lakewood BOE operations for the past ten years.

But the annual independent audit of the Lakewood school board’s books, for the sixth consecutive year, found no budgetary or accounting issues found in its finances, according to the report presented at the Wednesday night board meeting by independent auditor Holman, Frenia and Allison.

Mr. Holman told the board that he conducts annual audits for about 40 school districts total in New Jersey, and that it is “significantly rare to find no issues for an extended period of time.”

“Would you agree that means we have a funding problem, not a spending problem?” asked BOE general counsel Michael Inzelbuch, referring to the increasingly large deficit under which the board operates.

Flipped Ratios

Lakewood BOE officials insist the budget gap is caused by the state’s funding formula, which allocates assistance based on the number of public school students in the district. While that formula produces equitable funding for most school districts in New Jersey, Lakewood’s inverse public-private ratio results in a severe shortfall.

Lakewood has more than ten times as many students in private schools as it has in public schools, according to BOE statistics. Public school enrollment is at 4,200, while the board estimates the nonpublic school population at 45,000. Other estimates peg the total at closer to 60,000.

In most districts, the additional private school students for which the district must pay transportation is minimal; in Lakewood, the district pays for a disproportionately large share of private school students’ transportation. The skewed nonpublic school numbers also means that district has far more students with specialized needs, compared to other districts with comparative numbers of public school students.

Will the taxpayer ultimately end up paying for the budget shortfall? New Jersey laws restrict increases on taxes for public schools to 2 percent per year. Some districts have been forced by the state to override the cap, but that has not yet happened in Lakewood.

State DOE officials do blame Lakewood for keeping taxes steady for several years before the rise of the current budget crunch; according them, the move to not increase taxes precipitated a chain reaction that led to the crisis.

Cost Cutting

Consolidation and belt-tightening are the name of the game for the BOE, but that can run into trouble on the ground. The estimated age of the tree in front of the Ella G. Clarke School in Lakewood is 200-years-old. It is also a protected historic landmark and cannot be removed. That should give pause to any developers weighing the purchase of Clarke, one of three properties the Lakewood BOE announced it would offer for sale, to raise funds and reduce operating expenses. The other two properties are campuses used by the Lakewood Early Childhood Center, currently holding modular trailers; and some land on the campus of Lakewood High School near ball fields. The board will also not renew its lease on Piner Elementary School.

“We’re being fiscally responsible,” BOE superintendent Dr. Laura Winters told parents demanding to know why the schools were being closed. “Lakewood public schools’ enrollment has dropped by 1,800 students over the past ten years, and 600 in the last three years alone. We need to consolidate.”

A resident expressed hope at the meeting that the Clarke campus will not turn into housing developments, as the neighborhood is already crowded. A board member agreed, but noted that the decision was the purview of the planning board, not the school board. Another public school building sold about ten years ago is now BMG’s Beis Shmuel beis medrash.

Board member Rabbi Moshe Raitzik raised the possibility of retaining the Clarke school and using it as a special education building. This could save the district hundreds of thousands of dollars it currently spends to send students with specialized needs to private schools.

“You People”

The nine-member board is comprised of over 75 percent Orthodox Jewish men. Together with Mr. Inzelbuch, those seated on the dais were almost entirely from that demographic, while the vast majority of parents in attendance were Hispanic, many of whom did not speak English and required a simultaneous translation. This dynamic is reflected in Lakewood’s residential and business demographics, and creates an undercurrent of tension at many of these meetings.

Speakers addressing the board — some of whom railed in Spanish, while board members looked on uncomprehendingly until a translator stepped in — have referred to the dynamic obliquely, using terms that translate to “you people” and “your children.”

Whether or not a short-term fix for the BOE’s woes can be found, the underlying structural problem means that the Lakewood school district seems destined to relearn the same lessons year after year.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1051)