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High school tuition hikes may threaten survival of smaller K-8 districts

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March 29, 2009
By DIANE D’AMICO, Education Writer, 609-272-7241
The Press of Atlantic City

The Buena Regional School District received a $3 million boost in state aid for 2008-09 thanks to a new school-funding formula, and will get almost $1 million more next year.

But that increase also is driving up costs in Estell Manor and Weymouth Township, which pay tuition to send their students to Buena Regional High School. Tuition will increase from $10,210 to $12,422 per student next year, but the two small, rural K-8 districts received no additional state aid.

Estell Manor plans to cut four full-time teachers from its staff of 16, and will still have to ask property taxpayers for a 6.7-cent hike in the tax rate to help cover the extra $300,000 in high school tuition for the 2009-10 school year. If voters reject the proposed budget, only the local K-8 budget could be cut.

“I just hope we can get the voters to understand that we have no alternative,” Estell Manor Superintendent John Cressey said. “We have to pay the tuition.”

Statewide, 282 K-6 and K-8 school districts send their students to high school in another district. Some are part of separate regional high school districts. Others use what are called sending/receiving agreements, in which the sending district pays tuition to a receiving district based on the actual cost of educating high school students in that district.

Because of changes in the school-funding formula, some K-8 districts are being hit with double-digit tuition increases, even while they are expected to keep their budgets within a state cap of about 4 percent.

And while they cut their own budgets and raise taxes to compensate, officials wonder if the process could eventually force them to close their schools.

Districts hit the hardest are those that send to former urban Abbott districts and those sending to under-funded districts such as Buena Regional and Hammonton, which are now getting more state aid.

The rural districts that send to Millville, a former Abbott district, will see tuition increase by more than 30 percent, from $6,495 to $8,603 per student. The amount is lower than the actual cost because the old tuition calculation did not include the additional Abbott aid. The state is phasing in the new formula for those districts, but in three more years tuition costs will have more than doubled.

“It’s draining all the resources from our K-8 program,” Maurice River Township School District Superintendent John Saporito said. “We got a zero state aid increase for next year, but tuition costs are going up about $400,000 in a town where one cent on the tax rate only raises $14,000.”

The district would have to increase the tax rate almost 30 cents just to cover tuition. Saporito is instead looking at cutting teachers and eliminating programs in the township’s one school, which ironically was named a School to Watch by the state Department of Education last year.

“We’re going to go from a School to Watch to watch a school go under,” Saporito said.

Receiving districts can charge less than their actual cost, but ultimately they must justify it to their own residents.

Millville Superintendent Shelly Schneider said her district also got no additional aid this year, and she likewise is cutting staff and asking Millville taxpayers for a tax increase. So while she sympathizes with her sending districts, she sees no alternative.

“If we give the sending districts a break, how do we explain that to our taxpayers?” she asked.

Assemblywoman Caroline Casagrande, R-Monmouth, Mercer, has sponsored a bill that would cap tuition increases at the same percentage increase in the state aid and tax levy of the sending district.

“We are trying to work out a solution that can be palatable to all,” she said. “This is forcing (sending districts) to cut into the core of their elementary budgets. It’s just unfair.”

Local school officials plan to lobby local legislators to support the bill. Frank Belluscio, spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association, said the association has been encouraging districts to work with their executive county superintendents to trim the tuition hikes.

But any cut likely would be temporary since periodic audits could require the sending districts to pay any money owed. Tuition is charged based on estimated enrollment, so the only time a sending district would benefit from a lower tuition is if fewer of its eighth-grade graduates attended the receiving district high school. That’s the case in Pleasantville, where tuition for students from Absecon will remain at $6,500 next year.

Decreased enrollment or increased spending can also raise tuition. Atlantic City’s tuition will increase 25 percent, to $20,342, next year for students from Brigantine, Longport, Margate and Ventnor.

“We would have come in at a zero percent tax increase if not for the tuition,” Brigantine superintendent Robert Previti said. “It’s an extra $1,065,000, even though the number of students is the same. They get to calculate it, there are no repercussions for them, and then we have to cut our (K-8) budgets.”

Several school administrators said they believe the process is part of the state effort to force school consolidation.

“We all know the state wants only K-12 districts,” Saporito said. “I hate to be cynical, but this falls in line with that agenda.”