CRISIS

(Continued from Page 2) new students that “have IEPs that require certain services,” in which they are being sent out-of-district to receive them. The parents, under state law, can reportedly dictate to a school district where their child(ren) can be sent to receive those necessary services.

“If a parent decides a course of action, we have to go with that,” Lee said. “We don’t have a say. If a child decides to go to Y.A.L.E School, we have to pay for Y.A.L.E School (which has campuses in Marlton, Cherry Hill and Northfield).”

While the school officials said that under the law they could not publicly reveal where district students have been placed outside the district, the options selected by affected parents have turned out to reportedly result in “tuition that is very costly” to the Washington district.

When pressed by members of the Washington committee for specifics, Gfroehrer responded that she “can’t get into specifics,” but revealed that the Washington district “received two new special education students this year” and that it “anticipates another next year,” and that one student’s tuition is $160,000, while another is $300,000, and a third is costing the district $100,000. The tuitions of $160,000 and $300,000 include transportation, according to the district business administrator.

Meanwhile, she noted, when the Green Bank Elementary School was closed, the township was receiving $600,000 annually in state aid, but “this year it is down $145,000,” or what James recognized to be a situation where the Washington district is “progressively losing 30 to 40 percent a year.” Its last $220,164 in fund balance went to reportedly support the proposed budget for the upcoming 2023-24 school year, according to Washington school district officials.

“The bottom line is that the state requires things of us to do and is not funding us,” Gfroehrer declared. “They put unfunded mandates on the district that are very costly.”

The Washington Township Board of Education has since declared by a March 13 resolution a “financial crisis” and “accordingly advises the New Jersey Commissioner of Education that as a Pinelands community which has limited resources available to it that it has no options and/or alternatives available to it other than to request additional funding in the total amount of $976,770 as relief from the state in order to balance the 2023-24 school year budget without exception.”

Failing to close the gap, the resolution warned, will have a “ripple effect” and lead to both “strain” and “undue hardship” on the Mullica and Greater Egg Harbor districts’ “budget efforts.”

The Washington school board, Gfroehrer noted, is having another meeting to discuss the crisis at 6 p.m. on March 29 at the Washington Municipal Building where she said 8th District (now encompassing Washington after being in the 9th District for a decade) Assemblyman Brandon Umba is scheduled to attend.

Since the aforementioned March 7 and March 13 meetings, in the wake of statewide public backlash to the funding cuts amid rising costs being seen in the state’s suburban districts, on March 17, Democratic Governor Phil Murphy announced that “a bill in partnership with the Legislature” has been crafted “to offer additional funding to school districts that will see a reduction in school aid from the state in the Fiscal Year 2024 budget as a result of the S-2 funding formula,” maintaining it will “make over $100 million available to eligible districts.”

It was really the first time the governor has acknowledged the revised school funding formula, implemented in 2018, actually cuts funding to some school districts in the state, having previously maintained he is “fairly funding” school districts.

In the last paragraph of an accompanying press release, it was explained that the new bill (S-3732) allows school districts that will see a reduction in school aid in the Fiscal Year 2024 state budget to “request an additional amount of aid equal to 66 percent of the difference between the amount they received in the 2022-2023 school year and the amount of aid currently proposed for the 2023-2024 school year.”

“All eligible districts that submit a request to the Commissioner of Education will receive this additional funding, and must include a written plan indicating how they intend to fund operations in future years when this aid is no longer available,” it is added.

Gfroehrer said as a result of that legislation, the Washington district is “receiving” just over $36,000 in additional state aid.

“It will help, but it won’t alleviate the shortfall,” she declared, noting that as of now, excluding any additional funding, for the 2023-24 budget, the Washington district has accounted for $1,402,760 in revenue, another $130,626 in preschool funding, while it’s appropriation is $2,379,530. The current 2022-23 school year budget is $2,031,629.

“I don’t know … we’ll have to discuss it and see what we do,” James told the school officials, noting that he might try to ring the phones of high level state officials who contacted the township amid emergencies such as a large wildfire last year. “As of right now, it is going to have an impact as much as we are trying. … We will do what we can, but they are cutting everybody’s budget, including ours, and I don’t know what they (the state) are doing with the money because they are not paying anybody’s bills.”

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As for a “sidewalk maintenance ordinance,” Heinold maintained that one would not require a “whole lot of policy decision making” because it is “sort of a technical coverage” type of thing, or simply to have “something on the books to cover these things.”

Following the discussion of the ordinances in the works, Mayor Dr. Gary Miller announced his support of proposed state legislation that would “ban disposable wipes in New Jersey,” maintaining that he would “do what I can to support this bill,” even offering to testify before state Assembly and Senate committees in favor of the drafted bill.

The borough has a wastewater system that has been clogged at times by homeowners flushing such wipes, according to the mayor, and he contended that despite those wipes being advertised as “disposable,” they are actually “not disposable” and “not biodegradable.”

“We are not the only municipality with this dilemma,” Miller asserted. “And it is costing taxpayers quite a bit of money.”

The mayor, however, recognized that moving to ban disposable wipes in the state “faces an uphill battle,” but that is why such a thing “could use support.”

Resident Joseph A. Aromando III dominated both public comment sections of the March 8 council meeting, using an initial section to take a swipe at Councilwoman Gail Caputo for her attending the session via a virtual platform. Aromando declared that “elected officials are basically here to be in person” and asked, “Why is it that we can’t have everyone show up?”

Aromando, a former borough councilman who has run in every governing body election since his 2002 defeat, was then asked to “have a seat” by several councilmen with his first name called out several times after having quipped, “Can the council lady … is it International Women’s Day, a special celebration?”

The former borough councilman, who returned to the microphone at the end of the session, called it “tragic” that the borough was still not requiring its department heads to turn in monthly reports as is required under borough code, after his putting the problem on the record on numerous other occasions.

“Not all of them are being given,” he contended. “It has got to be fixed. They chronical the activities of our town.”

While the reports are for council and administration, Aromando maintained, they also “belong to the people of the town and they should know what is going on in every one of these departments.”

The former borough councilman also took the current councilmembers and administrative team to task for not regularly updating the municipal website with borough council meeting minutes, pointing out the last ones that were posted were for a session back on Feb. 23, 2022.

“Whatever it takes … it needs to be put on the internet,” declared Aromando, suggesting the borough hire an assistant for the municipal clerk (who experienced a nearly four-month long absence due to health issues recently, with someone having been brought on board to help out). “When one clicks, you are like what is going on. You don’t have the information.”

Making the meeting minutes publicly available in a timely fashion, Aromando maintained, is at the core of the “Sunshine Law” or what is known as the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA), or “the foundation of everything we do in this state and what the town is based on.”

“Every time you go to get information here, you have to put a miner’s hat on and come with a pickaxe,” he said.

McIntosh declined to provide a rebuttal to Aromando’s remarks.