Now that the Princeton International Academy Charter School (PIACS) will not be opening this year, what will the WW-P school district do with the money it would have had to send for its portion of the students?
The answer is not so simple, as school officials say they took a chance and never budgeted the full amount in this year’s budget in the first place. The $400,000 they did budget, however, will most likely fall to reserves.
But their focus how now shifted to fears that approval of the charter school for the following year will create a worse financial debacle for the district that this year.
According to Larry Shanok, the WW-P assistant superintendent for finance, state statute requires districts to pay charter schools 90 percent of per pupil costs for the students that they will educate. “They won’t be educating any students, so they’re not entitled to any of the dollars,” Shanok said of the upcoming year.
According to school board president Hemant Marathe, the district never budgeted the full amount for the school. “We did not have the full amount earmarked for the charter school,” he said, adding that the board cut the $850,000 originally budgeted in half as a result Governor Chris Christie’s massive cut in state funding.
So the district had only budgeted around $400,000 specifically for the charter school in this year’s budget, he said. “If the charter school had happened, we would have had to come up with the $400,000 somewhere else in the budget.”
Still, Marathe said, “the bottom line is the taxpayers did save $850,000 for the coming year any way you look at it. We are not going to spend anywhere close to $850,000 to educate this 75 or so kids that would have been sent to the charter school.”
Shanok confirmed the data, saying that in March, the Department of Education told the district to prepare to send $862,000, but that the estimated number has changed a few times over the past year.
“However, we did a zero budget-to-budget increase, and the only way you get $862,000, even though we were squeezing, was to take more programs,” Shanok explained. So, “we budgeted $400,000. If the charter school had opened, we would have had to take some steps to reduce programs. As it is, we won’t have to reduce further.”
So what about the $400,000 it did budget? “There are two major possibilities,” said Shanok. “One would be that some of the things that were cut back won’t be cut back as firmly, but more likely, we’ll let that $400,000 sit, and we’ll turn it into excess surplus and apply it through the usual process for tax relief.”
Marathe said that at the end of each year, there is usually money that is left over in the budget that is returned to the taxpayers through the following year’s budget process. “Our budget next year is very challenging as it is,” Marathe said. “In the years since I joined the board in 2001, we have returned money to the taxpayers. We hope to do that next year as well.”
Combined with the pressures of a looming 2 percent cap on property tax increases statewide, the possibility of the charter school’s future opening could spell even more difficult financial times for the WW-P district.
Shanok said that if the governor enacts a 2 percent cap on the general tax levy, the WW-P school district would only be allowed to increase the tax levy — the overall amount of money it raises through taxes — by $2.7 million. That increase will not cover the increases it already sees will occur. For example, Shanok indicated that energy costs were estimated to increase in time for next year’s budget already. And, the teachers’ contract calls for a $3 million pay increase.
“The governor hasn’t given us a tool yet for dealing with teacher contracts,” he said, referring to the language the governor used in his speeches this winter on his plans for cutting costs. Shanok said there are also expected increase in the district will see in its contributions to the state employee health benefits plan.
On top of those factors, Shanok said the charter school has recently claimed that it would have had 105 students from WW-P that would be attending PIACS. “As I understand the state’s rules, and if it turned out they were right, it wouldn’t have been $860,000,” he said. “We would have had to send them $1.2 million. Where would that have come from?”
“If that happens, things will have to be taken from the bulk of students in the district to support those students who would have otherwise received an excellent education here,” Shanok added.
