WEST ORANGE, NJ — At its last in-person meeting, on March 19, the West Orange Board of Education unanimously passed the preliminary 2020–2021 district budget. With a total of $170,999,914, the budget will raise taxes in West Orange by $22.18 per month, or $266.21 per year, for the average taxpayer.
Taxes bring $141,091,179 to the district, while state aid contributes $17,826,168. Budgeted fund balance adds another $2 million, and tuition from out-of-district students brings $771,419 to the operating budget. The district will receive $3,229,122 in federal and state restricted aid, which Business Administrator John Calavano said at the meeting is funding that comes from grants. For debt service, $5,348,967 will come from local taxes. State aid will pay $733,057 in debt service, and the budgeted fund balance is $2.
The largest expenditure in the budget is salaries, taking up 58.05 percent at $99,244,282.
“These salaries include a projected increase from guide movements, meaning that depending on the college courses you take and the credits you receive, you can move from a BA to a master’s degree or a doctorate, which comes with an increase in your salary,” Calavano said. “So we have to anticipate those movements and longevity.”
At $26,033,959, benefits cost the district the second most amount of money. Calavano said the 15.22 percent of the budget that pays for benefits includes health insurance, workers’ compensation, Social Security and pension payments for noncertificate employees.
BOE member Cheryl Merklinger asked why the district chose not to use the state health benefits plan, and President Ken Alper explained that the state plan does not always save the district money.
“Every year we actually do look at the state health plan numbers and some years it’s actually more expensive than what we have,” Alper said at the meeting. “Other years it’s less expensive. All of our contracts have an equal or better provision, saying that the board has the right to change health plans as long as it’s to something as good as or better than what we have now.”
He explained that if currently a doctor copay is $10, but with the state benefits plan it is $25, the district would have to pay $15.
“Over time, it ends up being either more expensive or the same,” Alper said.
According to Calavano, the district had to use $692,440 to balance the budget this year.
“You’re at 2.5 percent for your increase in local tax levy,” he said. “That’s a must for the operating budget. We still have a little over $5 million that we can utilize. We can actually go up, but when you do that you’re raising the taxes.”
Superintendent Scott Cascone said the same thing at the meeting.
“The board would be completely within its right to utilize every cent of this banked cap, all $5.5 million,” he said. “You could vote on that and it could be used. Of course, it would have a tremendous negative impact on the burden to the local taxpayer.”
Included in the 2020–2021 budget is money for 2,800 Chromebooks to continue to support the one-to-one initiative, 125 laptops for teachers and 60 desktop computers for other staff members. There are also capital projects built into the budget: lighting system upgrades at Liberty Middle School; a main water line replacement at St. Cloud Elementary School; roof replacements on the St. Cloud gymnasium, the Mt. Pleasant Elementary School kitchen and Hazel Elementary School; retaining wall replacements at Hazel and Washington Elementary School; and a structural wall replacement at the bus garage.
“This may change,” Calavano said. “We had some issues we noticed in the last couple of days, so I think when we get to the final you’ll probably see one or two new items, and we’ll have to remove some of these.”
Former BOE member Sandra Mordecai asked about a possible referendum for a facilities upgrade bond at the meeting, which Cascone said was too much of a tax burden to add to this year’s budget.
“We sent preliminary plans to the state, and at that time the planned referendum was substantial, north of $50 million,” he said. “We looked at that and said, ‘How feasible would it be to move forward with a referendum of that size, and how palatable would that be to the public?’”
In the end, the district decided the tax burden of a $50 million bond would be too much for residents.
“We had a critical eye on that referendum, knowing that this board will be moving a referendum vote forward within the next year or so, and that will also contribute to increased taxes,” Cascone said. “I think that’s why we were a little more frugal than we would have liked to have been with the banked cap.”
Cascone also described some of the ways he and the other administrators decide what goes in the budget and what doesn’t.
“In sitting through budget sessions, we really have become creative in some of the ways we’re trying to cut costs,” he said. “For example, flexing our security schedules, flexing our custodial schedules to cut down on our overtime, to look at how we’re doing chaperoning for our events. But when the rubber meets the road, these are relatively small. The only way you’re going to get a school district operating at a point where it’s going to satisfy the most conservative of the fiscal prudents out there is if you take that salary line and decrease it drastically. If you decrease it drastically, you’re going to change the landscape of this school district and any school district.”
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