Brick Township Board of Education/Schools (Photo: Daniel Nee)
The Brick Township Board of Education introduced its tentative budget for the 2025-26 school year this week, however the numbers have the potential to change greatly – for better or worse – once Trenton issues additional guidance on funding and budgetary policy for the upcoming academic year.
“We took the exact budget of what our expenditures are this year – and as you know 86 percent of our budget is made up of salaries and benefits, which are probably going to go up 4 or 5 percent,” said Superintendent Thomas Farrell. “We don’t yet know that actuarial number.”
There is also the perpetual question of state funding, which has been slashed over a period of seven years under a budget agreement hatched at the time by Gov. Phil Murphy and since-ousted state Senate President Steven Sweeney. The funding cuts have led to hundreds of layoffs and mandatory property tax increases for the entire time period. There is potential for some relief this year, however that may take months to finalize after some funding decisions could be reached over the next week. The state’s fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30 each year.
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The tentative budget introduced by the board has left expenditures flat from the current school year, at $166,132,253. That budget would be supported by a local property tax levy of $130,606,297, an increase of about $6 million over the current school year’s $124,063,219 levy. The district is required to raise taxes to at least the maximum 2 percent spending cap under the state’s formula, which finds that Brick’s school taxes are too low and the district is not paying its “fair share” toward education.
Under the state’s formula, Brick is under adequacy for education spending by $28 million, and is under-taxed by about $40 million.
The numbers can – and almost certainly will – change before the budget is finally adopted later this year. The final numbers will be largely dependent on what funds Trenton releases or holds back from Brick and other districts.
“Apparently, for those districts that are considered under their local fair share, there is a pot of money,” said Farrell. “We’re waiting to hear on that, along with the guidance for the tax levy. Otherwise, the budget is going to be like it has in similar years. We’re going to have to balance the budget with what we have.”
Farrell explained that there were rumblings that the state would change the way it funds special education to correspond to actual enrollment numbers versus census data, which would likely find Brick is underfunded by at least $3 million. But even if the state frees up special education funds, there may be caps on how much revenue a district can receive, even if the formula finds it is entitled to more. Details on those policies are expected to be shared within the coming weeks as the state draws closer to its own budget negotiations for the coming fiscal year.
“I thought this year would change, timeline-wise, but it absolutely didn’t,” said Farrell. “Last year, it didn’t change until the summer.”
District officials have set a hearing on the budget for April 28, 2025 at the regularly-scheduled Board of Education meeting.
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