By Chris Rotolo
LITTLE SILVER – Carolyn Kossack remembers taking over management of Point Road School and Markham Place School more than a decade ago. The district’s educational landscape looked much different then.
“I’ve been here for 12 years and in the beginning we offered five sections of all general education classes,” explained Kossack, the Little Silver School District superintendent. “Now kindergarten through fourth grade are sections of four and we’re looking at class sizes of 25. In some districts that may be the norm, but it’s increasingly difficult for us to maintain general education programming.”
The struggle, Kossack said, stems from a lack of funding for special education programming, a problem she said is not isolated to her Two River borough, and an obstacle inflamed by the 2 percent property tax cap placed on New Jersey municipalities.
In March, the administration of Gov. Phil Murphy proposed a budget that increased direct K-12 school aid by $206 million over the previous year, as part of a record $15.4 billion in state education funding. One aspect of the state’s current school funding formula is that it allocates based upon wealth equalization, which disperses funding inversely to each individual school district according to the community’s relative wealth.
Little Silver public schools received an increase of $55,626 and overall will be allotted $548,335 in state aid for the 2019-2020 school year. Of the 15 public school districts in the Two River-area – including the four regional high schools – Little Silver finished with the sixth largest aid increase.
Kossack called the funding bump “nominal.”
“It may be an increase from last year, but looking at it honestly, that’s not even enough to hire a single teacher, let alone cover the costs of a child who may move into our district and have significant needs,” Kossack said.
According to Kossack, the Little Silver School District has approximately 850 students and the average annual per-pupil cost is about $15,500 for a general education student, about 26 percent less than the New Jersey average per pupil cost of $20,849.
For special education students, the state calculates a district’s special education categorical aid using averages. The state’s Special Education Extraordinary Aid program provides additional funding to districts with classified students who have certain expenses over a set threshold of $45,000 in instructional and support services.
The superintendent noted the needs of a special education student can vary greatly from one pupil to the next and cost marginally or significantly more than a general education student, even as much as $150,000 a year if a student requires out-of-district placement.
Of the town’s total student body, special education students comprise 14 percent of the population, yet 25 percent of the district budget supports special education needs, Kossack.
“It’s very diverse in terms of the amount of money spent above the average per-pupil cost, and the common misconception is that more affluent school districts have the funds to pay for all of its special education needs. But we don’t,” Kossack said. “Unless we go out to referendum every year, we have no vehicle to increase. We’re caught between a rock and a hard place.”
Kossack said in recent years, while operational, salary and benefits costs have risen, funding has not increased accordingly, forcing the school district to cut general education teachers in order to hire additional special education personnel, as well as to pay for out-of-district tuition and transport for a number of in-need students.
It’s the reason Kossack recently provided testimony in the form of a letter to the state Assembly, supporting the ongoing bipartisan effort to fully fund special education aid.
Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-3) proposed a bill (S3) that, if adopted, would fully fund both special education categorical aid and extraordinary aid.
On the opposite side of the political aisle, the Republican caucus has proposed Every Child Counts, a school funding reform plan that would make special education funding fully categorical, rather than its current breakdown, which is one-third categorical and two-thirds susceptible to wealth equalization.
“Districts like ours have maintained prudent budgets for years, and because of how the formula is currently written, we’ve been forced to cut staff in order to afford special education expenses. And that creates divisiveness,” Kossack said. “I’m hoping there will continue to be a bipartisan approach that can create a fair and equitable resolution.”
Kossack is a member and treasurer of the Monmouth County Superintendents Roundtable executive board. She is on the board of directors for the Monmouth Ocean Educational Services Commission and participates on the professional development committee for the New Jersey Association of School Administrators. She was recently named Monmouth County Superintendent of the Year by a committee of Monmouth County superintendents. Kossack will be honored at the Educator of Year ceremony May 23 where she will also be the keynote speaker.
