According to an anonymous source inside Collingswood schools, 12 current staffers will not be retained for the 2024-25 school year, caught in a budget crunch district leadership called “a structural budget deficit,” put at $2.8 million by business administrator/assistant superintendent Beth Ann Coleman.

The district refused to confirm the number of positions to be eliminated at its board of education meeting Monday evening, saying the affected teachers would be notified next Monday before a special board meeting called for Tuesday, May 7, to approve renewed teacher’s contracts. The state’s deadline for districts to offer contracts to teachers is May 15.

District superintendent Dr. Fredrick McDowell said the cuts were unavoidable. “These are all tough choices, decisions we were forced to make,” he replied, in answer to board president Regan Kaiden’s question on process.

“We’ve sat down with our school leaders, and the union leadership, and discussed how we maintain continuity of services given the budget challenge. In terms of number of reductions, it was based on the math and shared with the union leadership,” he added. One unintended consequence in reducing staff is that “the individuals who are most affected also have the least impact on the budget,” as they tend to be non-tenured, lower salary-scale employees, and “we want to make sure we’re not damaging our schools’ ability to provide services.” Much of the layoff process, he explained, is driven by each union’s collective bargaining agreement.

At the heart of the shortfall is $3.6 million lost in federal special grants and entitlements — expiring American Rescue Plan and CARES Act funding – with the district only projected to receive $6.8 million in 2024-25 after being awarded $10 million last year. McDowell was quick to note that drastically increased transportation, insurance, and special education services contributed to the “fiscal cliff” the district was now facing, that “we knew was coming, for about three years now.” The cliff, McDowell explained, occurs when the cost to provide services significantly exceeds the amount of new dollars coming in.

A tax increase, $136 per year for the owner of the average assessed home of $233,420, will help the district balance its $38.6 million operating budget next year. Of that amount, $18.7 million comes from the local tax levy, increased the state-mandated maximum two percent from last year, Coleman said. The district expects to educate 2,344 students next year, including 250 preschoolers. Its costper- pupil is $17,513, actually down $140 from 2023-24. A pie chart presented showed the district spends 80 percent of dollars on instruction and student services, 11 percent on facilities upkeep and management, and nine percent on administration.

Collingswood used $1.1 million of its fund balance in 2023-24 to support that budget, leaving just $750,000 in surplus, well below the $1 million Coleman said she typically strove to carry from year to year. None will be applied to the 2024-25 budget.

Both Coleman and McDowell spent a good portion of the budget presentation talking about the state’s failure to properly fund school districts similar to Collingswood and urged the huge audience that turned out for the meeting to “put your voice out there to fund education in New Jersey.”

“Since March, we’ve been asking you to partner with us to put pressure on the state to create a more equitable funding formula,” said McDowell, “or at least enable us to go out to our community and ask for what we need,” meaning the ability to raise taxes more than two percent. Unlike other Retrospect- area districts, Collingswood’s $10 million in state aid was only nicked by a fraction of a percent, totaling $75,000.

Approximately 30 teachers were listening Monday, a few hoisting signs expressing clear displeasure over the administrators’ budgeting decisions and mentioning grant funding specifically. To the charge that the district was improperly reallocating grant funding, Coleman explained: “Certain costs were identified by building admins, of things they wanted for next year, that we couldn’t pay for. So, I amended some of the grants for things like curriculum supplies, that we were allowed to pay for using the expiring ESSER grants. Things we have to purchase for next year anyway, and I went lineby- line in the budget, wherever I could charge off as one-time purchases against grants I did,” she pointed out.

Another charge, that the district has hired more high-level administrators than the budget can support, was answered by board president Regan Kaiden, who said the new $165,000-peryear assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, Meredith Howell-Turner, is being paid out of grant funding.

Coleman, Collingswood’s top business official for many years and recognized by her peers in the state as an exceptional business administrator, said of the state funding formula, “I never thought we would be in this position, 10 to 12 years ago, but then we were flat-funded for several years. Districts like ours are strangled in the middle.” She added that she had been asked to testify before the state legislature on the unfairness of the formula for smaller, low-to-middle-income districts. She also said she had researched whether or not the state had based its aid to Collingswood on the correct residential income numbers, only to discover it hadn’t. “Their numbers weren’t off by a lot but the point is they were wrong. We have to stay very vocal, stay in front of this, so we don’t have another budget year that’s as bad.” Documents Coleman provided the next day showed the incorrect district income figures for both Collingswood and Oaklyn, as well as the state’s adequacy budget calculation utilizing an incorrect tax levy figure.

One area the district was hit with last year was a disproportionate amount of transportation costs being generated by a state mandate that holds Collingswood responsible for tuition and transportation costs, which can be exorbitant, of so-called homeless students, as the state charges the district of the child’s last known address. “Currently, we are responsible for 16 children of families who were evicted for non-payment by the new owners of Parkview,” Coleman said. “It has caused a lot of sleepless nights for Fred (Dr. McDowell) and me.”

One group of employees that would seem to be benefitting next year is the instructional aides, whom McDowell specifically called out as wanting to “improve” those salaries and wages. During the meeting, no teachers spoke on the budget, the looming cuts, or the ongoing contract negotiations between the board and the teachers’ union. Only Kaitlin Seeley, administrative assistant to middle school principal Dr. James McMullin, noted, “we are barely making the same salary a substitute teacher gets, and we’re often the first line of response on school safety now, for both students and staff. We’re doing more, and there needs to be acknowledgement of this by the board, because I have no idea how you’re going to make this a desirable position for anyone else who doesn’t love it here.”

Megan Mikulski and Kelly Maia questioned McDowell on whether the board would be privy to the final staffing cuts discussions, taking place before this Monday in advance of the Tuesday board meeting. McDowell replied that the board would not, “it will be a collaboration between the school leaders and the associations. You, tonight, are voting on the final budget that has already come back approved by the state.”

Ultimately, Mikulski and Maia abstained from the board’s final budget vote, which passed 7-0. Unclear Monday was how programming and class sizes might be affected by the staff cuts, and McDowell said that information will not be made public until the May 21 meeting.