Jackson School District Must Close Elementary School Due to $18 Million Budget Shortfall, New Jersey State Says

The New Jersey Department of Education is forcing the Jackson School District to sell a 60-year-old elementary school amid further budget cuts.

“It took a whole week to hear anything, which really set us back in terms of planning,” said Superintendent Nicole Pormilli. “It was a surprise how long it took.”

The only way to close the $18 million budget deficit was to close Sylvia Rosenauer Elementary School and cut its staff by 70. The local school board opposed this.

While a last-minute $2.5 million in state aid will save the bus program, the cuts will be felt elsewhere.

“We’re still able to keep most of our athletic programs, but we’ve brought back some coaches and assistant coaches,” Pormilli said. “We’re just so short staffed — our facilities, our teachers, all of our support staff — very short staffed and everyone is very, very overworked.”

The budget also includes a 9.9% tax increase approved by the state after years of a static cap. The city’s school board rejected the tax increase, which was rejected by state regulators.

“We asked to lift that 2% cap a little bit, but not 9.9%,” Pormilli said. “That’s a lot at once.”

Pormilli sets aside $7 million for the eventual sale of the Rosenauer School.

“The sale of the school, that’s a one-time investment,” Pormilli said. “It’s not a constant revenue stream, so it doesn’t solve our problem.”

The Rosenauer School’s grades 1-5 students and teachers will move two miles away to Crawford-Rodriguez Elementary School.

Rosenauer’s kindergarten classes are split between Crawford, Johnson Elementary School and a wing of Jackson Memorial High School.

The board says the changes are not the result of overspending, but of nearly a decade of cuts to Gov. Phil Murphy’s “S2” funding formula without another source of revenue.

The formula redistributes money to underfunded districts based on calculations of a “fair local share.”

“I don’t think S2 is completely broken,” Pormilli said. “But I do think there are things that need to be fixed there that maybe they didn’t anticipate.”

Jackson isn’t the only district facing these problems.

Murphy previously said on News12’s “Ask The Governor” that the formula may be re-evaluated.