Technical
school stands firm on charging tuition
School districts air budget
concerns. Board listens but decides charging best solution
to financial woes.
Tuesday, January 31, 206 • By Sara Leitch •
The Express-Times
WASHINGTON TWP. | Representatives of
seven local school districts on Monday pleaded with the
board of the Warren County Technical School, asking members
to reconsider their decision to institute tuition charges in
the fall.
"We're working with very tight budgets,"
said Kevin Brennan, superintendent of the Greenwich Township
School District. I'm going to go into my second year where
I'm cutting teachers. This is a real impact on smaller
districts. This is new money coming out of a capped
budget."
Board members said they took the comments
seriously, but at meeting's end they voted unanimously to
change their policy manual, giving themselves the right to
charge local districts tuition for each student they send to
the technical high school.
The technical school board voted in
October to institute tuition charges, saying it was forced
to do so by state lawmakers who have not increased funding
for years. Freeholders last year raised county funding for
the school by 3.5 percent, to $3.8 million.
About 52 percent of the school's budget
is paid for through county tax revenue. Currently, the
remainder is funded with state aid and grants. But next
fall, the school board wants municipalities that send
students to the school to chip in, too.
"It's very unfair to districts that don't
use us," board member Harold Warne said. "They've been
paying to send your students here."
The board plans to charge sending
districts an annual tuition of $2,175 for regular education
students and $3,250 for special education students,
beginning in the 2006-2007 school year, though
Superintendent Alan Namoli said those numbers might change
depending on the number of grants the school can
attract.
For regional school districts that levy
their own taxes, the tuition charges would be an additional
cost. In the municipalities that send students to Warren
Hills Regional High School, tuition charges for technical
students will translate to $30 in additional taxes for the
average homeowner, said Peter Merluzzi, superintendent of
the Warren Hills Regional School District
In districts that have sending-receiving
contracts with local high schools, a technical school
tuition would create a budget crunch because they strike
their contracts with local high schools based on an estimate
of the number of students they will send there. It takes two
years to reconcile contracts and refund any extra cash,
school officials said.
The tuition charges would account for 6
cents on the local school tax rate in Oxford Township, Chief
School Administrator Dennis Wolf said.
"It's going to be a tremendous impact on
our taxpayers," Wolf said. "Our budget will go down. I have
no doubt about that."
School officials said if the technical
school board starts charging tuition, they'd hope board
members would have to answer directly to the voters, as they
do.
"There has to be some opportunity for
dialogue with residents, to give them the opportunity to say
yea or nay," Hackettstown Superintendent Robert Gratz said.
"Otherwise, it's almost like taxation without
representation."
Freeholder Richard Gardner attended the
meeting, and said the county will keep funding the technical
school as best it can.
"This is a county school," Gardner said.
But, he added, "it's fair for a municipality that's not
sending so many children to not have so much of a burden
placed on them."
The state government is failing students
by not increasing its aid, said Alfred Annunziata, Hope
Township's chief school administrator, who described the
tuition charge as a tax shift that allows freeholders to
keep the county tax rate low while forcing municipalities to
pick up the tab
Spreading the tuition charge around the
entire county would raise tax rates county-wide by one-tenth
of a cent, he said, while charging tuition will mean Hope
Township residents will pay 1.5 cents more in taxes to send
their own student to the technical school.
"Education in New Jersey is a state
responsibility," Annunziata said. "This discussion is a
manifestation of the fact that the state hasn't been footing
the bill."
Board members disagreed, saying tuition
charges would be more equitable than hiking county
taxes.
"Each municipality is responsible for
providing an education for its own students," board member
Harold Warne said. "The fact is, you've had a free
ride."
One taxpayer at the meeting said she
didn't mind the prospect of paying additional taxes to cover
technical school tuition.
"We just had a reval; a few cents more is
not going to make a difference," said Debbie Bodayle, of
Lopatcong, president of the Warren Tech PTA. "Based on the
education our kids are getting here, it's worth it. We've
been dealing with the cuts in this school, and they need the
money."
In other business, board members voted
unanimously to hire Bruce Jones, formerly the lawyer for the
Alpha Borough school board, as their attorney.
Reporter Sara Leitch can be reached at 908-475-8044 or by
e-mail at sleitch@express-times.com.
© 2006 The Express-Times. Used with
permission.
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