Strings Attached, Maybe: BOE Reviews Possible Restrictions on Aid

While Scotch Plains-Fanwood School District administrators were pleased to learn last week that the district would receive $2.2 million in state aid, they are now trying to determine exactly how they can and cannot spend the additional funds. The amount given is a $770,000 increase from the approximately $1.4 million it was expected to receive.

According to a press release issued by the New Jersey Department of Education on July 12, it appears the Scotch Plains-Fanwood school district must appropriate the entire $2.2 million in aid to special education. However, Board of Education president Trip Whitehouse said district officials are trying to find out exactly how specific, or how accurate, that restriction is.

“We just don’t know as of now how the money can be used,” echoed superintendent Margaret Hayes. The New Jersey Department of Education did not return calls for comment. 

If the additional $770,000 ends up coming to the school district with no strings attached – or if the extra funding can be maneuvered so that it has no restrictions – school administrators will consider several ways to allocate the money. However, Scotch Plains and Fanwood residents can be guaranteed one thing for certain: there will be no property tax relief this year.

The deadline to adjust constituents’ taxes came and went Tuesday evening – just nine days after the infusion of additional state aid was announced, and before school officials could determine how freely the funds could be spent. While Christie encouraged townships to use the additional aid to decrease the burden of property taxes, it remains unclear, based on the press release, whether all townships, or only some, can utilize the money in this way.

Though the funds will not decrease property taxes this year, the money could be used to provide tax relief next year, according to Whitehouse. If only a fraction of the additional funding is spent to bolster the school budget, he explained, the remaining money would become “excess funds,” which would likely be used to ease the property tax burden for 2012.

However, Whitehouse acknowledged that the increase in aid, paired with the inability to use the aid to relieve taxes this year, certainly could impact the school budget for the upcoming year. “[This situation] could allow us the time to talk about pressing areas within the budget that some of this money could be used for,” he said.

Specifically, he said that some of the incoming aid could be used to cover costs associated with enrollment estimation mistakes that may occur. If actual enrollment figures, which will become known later in the summer, differ greatly from the estimated figures that the current budget uses as baselines, staff may have to be hired or rearranged within the district. 

Whitehouse further recognized that the aid could be spent “to bring back a variety of things that may have been deferred from the budget” or “provide more depth” to areas already included in the budget.

In all, he said the constituents should have a voice in deciding where the funds should be spent, if the funds can in fact be spent freely. “The schools are part of the community,” he said. “It’s prudent to have these discussions [regarding the additional funding] in public to allow people to weigh their opinions and hear administrative recommendations.”

Both Whitehouse and Hayes stated that if the district does have the ability to make decisions regarding how to spend the money, meetings on the matter would likely take place after the summer months.

Meanwhile, the additional funds to the district could very well be exclusively earmarked to special education. For the 2011-2012 school year, the district appropriated $5.1 million, or 6.4 percent of the school budget, for special education. This figure could increase to about $5.9 million, or 7.3 percent of the school budget, if the additional funding is required to be granted to special education. In either case, special education will receive more funding than it did last year, when it was appropriated $5 million, or 6 percent of the budget. 

Special Services Director Thomas Beese and Special Education Supervisor Diane Peneno said they did not know whether the district's Department of Special Services would receive the extra funds.