Millburn Dist. 24 cuts to be on ballot

Voters in the Millburn Elementary District 24 will decide at the voting booths in November whether to support a tax rate increase to prevent $1.1 million in education budget cuts.

The District 24 school board recently voted to include a referendum on the November ballot to increase property tax rate to raise $1.1 million to offset state funding shortfalls.

"Nobody wants to pay more for taxes, but you get what you pay for," said Laura Brown, president of the parent teacher organization. "They just keep chipping away at it, and this isn't just a chip, it's a big chunk."

The owner of a home in the district valued at $300,000 would see an increase of about $730 in property taxes paid annually to the district.

The board had considered a range of possible increases for the referendum. The amount selected would allow the district to operate at its current level and remove it from the state's financial watch list, officials said.

"We depend on state aid more than other districts because we don't have as much commercial in our area," said Shawn Lahr, president of the school board. "We are getting hit harder that way."

Lahr said the district, which includes two schools and 1,677 students, had to cut several teaching positions two years ago and has raised activity and registration fees to balance the budget.

"We have already been a very frugal school district," Lahr said. "We have been making cuts and streamlining everything."

The district is looking at a few options if the referendum does not pass, including increasing class sizes to as large as 30 students and a complete restructuring of the two K-8 schools to establish one school as the lower grade school and one for the upper grades.

A restructuring would allow the school to balance the number of children in the classes more efficiently, which would require fewer classes and fewer teachers, Lahr said.

"A lot of people move into this community because it's a K-8, but we are considering it," he said.

The school district had continued to succeed even with the cuts so far and was awarded the Bright A+ Award from the SchoolSearch organization last fall. The award is presented to the top 5 percent of school districts in the state based on ISAT scores. Only 58 of the state's 868 districts received the award.

"We have never had very much fat to cut, but two years ago they gid rid of any that was available." Brown said. "Some of the cuts are really going to compromise the quality of education are kids are going to get."