State Aid Remains Consistent for Montclair School District
Local schools will get $6.5 million in state funding for the 2013-14 school year, the same amount it took in last year.
The Montclair school district will receive the same amount of state aid in 2013-14 as it did this year.
Gov. Chris Christie’s office released the state aid figures for school districts in New Jersey for 2013-14 on Thursday afternoon, which included an increase of about $93 million from last year’s numbers. In what was widely anticipated by local school administrators, there will be no change in state aid next year.
The Montclair school district will get $6.5 million in state aid for the 2013-14 school year. This figure includes $4.1 million for special education, $1.1 million in transportation aid and nearly $750,000 for security aid.
The state aid will be factored into the district’s $111.5 million preliminary budget presented by Interim Business Administrator Nicolas Puleio at the Board of Education meeting on Monday.
Even before state aid numbers were known, the district’s preliminary 2013-14 budget included no tax levy increase and a decrease in spending of 3.3 percent.
The consistency in state aid marks a welcomed change of course for the district, which as has seen funding vacillate downward for the past 30 years. Since a sharp drop in aid in 2010-11, the district has seen its funding rise nearly 50 percent.
Uncertainty still remains about federal funding for next year. In anticipation of the potential sequestration in Washington, or across-the-board cuts in federal aid set to begin Friday, Puleio said the district has budgeted 75 percent of last year’s federal aid funding.
Halsey B.
7:46 am on Sunday, March 3, 2013
Last week, the US Secretary of Education indicated that the anticipated reductions in federal education aid are 5.1%. Is Montclair expecting some decrease in students eligible for Title I or IDEA dollars, that would warrant another approximately 20% reduction in federal aid, or are we padding the surplus, again?