Note: This story has been updated to include the impact on taxpayers in 2020 and 2021.
City will seek change in high school tuition funding formula and consider pulling out of ACHS
By NANETTE LoBIONDO GALLOWAY
VENTNOR – The Board of School Estimate Monday, March 7 approved the 2020-2021 school district budget and vowed to petition state legislators to change the sending-receiving school district tuition funding formula. A total of 47 people attended the meeting which was presented on the Zoom teleconferencing platform.
Mayor Beth Holtzman said although the original budget approved by the school board last month included backfilling three retirement positions, additional cuts to eliminate filling the posts helped to win her approval.
“With our enrollment going down, I told them we didn’t want those positions backfilled,” she said.
The total school budget for 2020-2021 is $22,761,871 with a tax levy of $17,382,698. Because the school district operates on a fiscal year and the city, the taxing entity, is on a calendar year, the amount of tax collected will be split over two years.
According to city officials, the tax rate increase will be 1.9 cents for 2020 and the balance will be carried over to 2021. The average taxpayer with a house assessed at $303,000 will see a $54.54 increase in their tax bill this year.
A $2,300 per pupil increase in the cost of tuition for Ventnor students to attend Atlantic City High School and prior year tuition adjustments added more than $1 million to the budget. It will cost $19,019 for students to attend the high school, up from $16,719 last year.
Without the increase, the tax levy would have increased just $84,000, mostly to cover contractual salary increases, Business Administrator Terri Nowotny said.
“Without the school tuition increase and the adjustment, it’s a beautiful budget,” Holtzman said.
School board Vice-president Kim Bassford, the city’s representative on the Atlantic City Board of Education, said because the funding formula for sending-receiving tuition includes state aid, future increases are on the horizon.
Atlantic City received an additional $17 million in state aid for the upcoming school year, which will be reflected in future tuition rates, she said.
“For 2021 our tuition costs will be $22,700 over the $19,000 we are budgeting today. This will only continue to get worse,” she said. “This is not going to go away anytime soon unless we can get something done about the way the tuition is calculated with state aid.”
Holtzman reached out to the Atlantic City superintendent by phone and email asking for documentation about that district’s $43 million surplus, but did not receive a direct response, she said.
“To increase tuition with that kind of surplus is obscene,” Holtzman said.
She also reached out to Atlantic County’s state legislators, but said, “we’re not getting traction on our efforts yet.”
Board President Douglas Biagi reminded the commissioners that for years the district came in with flat or lower budgets, but a gradual decrease in state “adjustment” aid and tuition increases should not reflect poorly on district administration efforts.
“I don’t want to forget what we’ve done all along,” Biagi said, stating there is no mismanagement in the Ventnor schools. Paying “college tuition rates,” for high school students “stinks,” he said.
Although Commissioner Lance Landgraf expressed frustration about being informed about the budget so late in the process, Nowotny said she informs the city as soon as she receives the state aid figures, and that school board meetings are open to the public, which includes the governing body.
Landgraf said he would like to see city representation on the school district’s budget committee.
Commissioner Tim Kriebel said the district and city should meet within three months and “combine our resources…to find people to help us reach out and advocate for Ventnor to get the formula reworked…so Ventnor doesn’t take the brunt like it is now.”
Landgraf suggested an effort to get more students to attend Atlantic County Institute of Technology, which has lower tuition rates, or discuss pulling out of Atlantic City High School.
“We need to pursue that for next year,” he said.
Ventnor 2018 Teacher of the Year Michele Masterman has started a change.org petition asking state legislators to change the sending-receiving district tuition funding formula, which she said allows the receiving district to benefit from additional state aid twice; once when it is received and again the following year through tuition adjustments.
“If a receiving district benefits from state aid, a sending district should benefit equally,” Masterman said in her petition. “Sending districts, with a limited say in how funds are spent, can be saddled with huge tuition costs and increases.”
Because the Ventnor City Board of Education reduced its previously proposed 2020-2021 school year budget by $404,636, the Board of School Estimate unanimously approved the budget.
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