Vo-tech
school boosts tuition for next year
Board members cite higher costs,
insufficient state funds.
Thursday, October 20, 2005 • By SARA LEITCH •
The Express-Times
FRANKLIN TWP. -- The Warren County
Technical School Board agreed Wednesday to institute tuition
fees for districts that send students to its school, saying
they were forced to do so by state lawmakers who have not
increased their funding for four years.
"A large portion of this could be avoided
if the state was fully funding schools," board President
David Shotwell said. "In order to operate the school, this
is what we have to do."
According to a resolution the board
passed unanimously Wednesday night, the school will charge
sending districts an annual tuition of $2,175 for regular
education students and $3,250 for special education
students, beginning in the 2006-07 school year.
If state funding remains flat, those
tuitions will rise to $2,425 for regular education students
and $3,781 for special education students in the 2010-11
school year.
Currently, the school is paid for by a
combination of state and county funds.
Board members stressed that local school
districts, not the parents of individual students, would pay
these fees.
"This is not a tuition charge being sent
to households or individuals," Principal and Acting
Superintendent Alan Namoli said. "This is a charge to the
board of education, who now should take some fiscal
responsibility for the children of their
district."
In some cases, it could be cheaper for
school districts to send students to Warren Tech rather than
to a regional high school, Namoli said. Districts pay about
$10,000 to send a student to a regional high school. Because
so much of Warren Tech's budget comes from state and county
sources, the sending district would pay about one-fifth the
cost of educating a student it sent to the technical
school.
"We are now a comprehensive high school,"
Namoli said. "We're prepared to go to 500 students -- if
small municipalities want to send more students here to
reduce their costs, we are prepared to accept those
students."
This year, 130 freshmen enrolled in the
school, bringing the student body to about 400, school
officials said.
Freeholders first proposed the tuition
plan in 2004 as a way to more equitably spread the school's
cost around the county.
That's an argument put forth by many
counties that charge tuition for students at their technical
schools, said Wendi Patella, a spokeswoman for the New
Jersey Council of Vocational Technical Schools.
"They're county-based school districts,
so they have limited ways to generate funds," Patella said.
"State aid has remained flat, and their expenses are
increasing. They have to look at where revenue can come
from."
Most technical schools in the state
charge tuition, Patella said. Some charge just a few hundred
dollars per student while others charge close to
$10,000.
Passaic County's tuition is among the
highest, she said, in part because most of that county s
technical students come from one municipality, the city of
Patterson.
It is an equitable funding source for the
districts that really are sending a lot of kids, she said.
Reporter Sara Leitch can be reached at
© 2005 The Express-Times. Used with
permission.
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