Superintendent: Preliminary Budget 'Appropriate,' Additional State Aid Will Save Some Jobs

The Fort Lee Board of Education adopted its preliminary budget Monday, which calls for a 2 percent increase in local taxes.

 “[The 2 percent] is among the lowest increases we’ve had for many years,” said Fort Lee Superintendent of Schools Raymond Bandlow, adding that the budget is “driven by the 2 percent cap limit.”

“It’s something that we are very conscientiously staying within,” Bandlow said. “And given the economy and our concern about tax payers as well, we try and balance the needs of school children with the tax payer’s ability to pay. I think it represents an appropriate budget.”

The very condensed looking budget as presented at Monday’s regular business meeting at School No. 1 was lacking in many details, but that’s all part of the budget process, school board officials said.

“This is how we do it,” explained business administrator and board secretary Cheryl Balletto. “It goes to the county now, and we won’t really have something to work with until we get the county approval. And after county approval you have your public presentation budget hearing.”

In responding to a public question, Bandlow said the preliminary budget does anticipate reduction in staff. The follow up to that question: how about teaching positions?

“We haven’t identified any specific positions yet, but it could include [teaching] personnel,” Bandlow answered, adding that no approximate dollar amounts or number of positions have been determined yet.

However Bandlow did say the recent increase in state aid will help in that regard.

“By itself it’s not going to prevent us from having to make some layoffs, but it does have the impact of now we’ll have to make fewer layoffs than if we didn’t receive this extra money,” he said. “It saved a few people’s jobs.”

You only have to go back as far as the 2009-2010 budget year to find a budget in which Fort Lee’s total state aid was in the neighborhood of $3.2 million. For the current year that amount was slashed to less than $400,000.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is providing an additional $250 million for New Jersey schools in his fiscal year 2012 budget. Aid figures released last week by the Department of Education show an increase for every school district in the state.

For Fort Lee that means $951,643, an increase of $565,960 in total aid over last year.

“Now they’ve restored a piece of it,” Bandlow said. “We like it better going that way than going the other way, but it’s nowhere near what it was. So they put back a small piece of what they cut. We’re glad it was that than not increasing it, and it makes a difference.”

Bandlow noted that while the state budget still has to go through its own approval process, “the numbers seem to hold very true at this time of year.”

He also said the additional money can be allocated as the local districts see fit, which he said “will make the situation better.”

“That will reduce the amount of cuts that we’ll have to make, but it does not eliminate the need for reductions,” Bandlow said. “The current fiscal year we lost about $3million in state aid. They’ve now restored $566,000 of that. That’s helpful, but it’s nowhere near the hole that it put us in.”