NJ School Funding: See How Much Brick Is Receiving

BRICK, NJ — The Brick Township School District is slated to receive a reduction in state funding, under preliminary aid figures released by the New Jersey Department of Education on Thursday.

The education department released the figures in the wake of the preliminary budget announced by Gov. Phil Murphy for the 2025 fiscal year.

While many districts are receiving additional funding in the 2024-25 budget, others are seeing a reduction in aid.

For the seventh year, the Brick Township School District is seeing a reduction in aid, though the cut for 2024-25 is significantly smaller than in previous years. The district is slated to receive $14,519,578 in state aid, a reduction of $112,455 — 0.77 percent — from the $14,632,033 it received for 2023-24.

Separate from the main state aid, Brick Township is slated to receive $7,063,056 in aid for its preschool program, which provides schooling for 3- and 4-year-olds.

In his budget address Tuesday, Murphy said the proposed $55.9 billion spending plan included $11.7 billion for public school funding that he said fully funds the school funding formula for the first time.

That formula was part of the School Funding Reform Act of 2008, which aimed to address school funding inequities. While many districts have received additional funding, more than 200 have seen aid cuts yearly since 2018, as a result of the revision to the SFRA known as S2 that was signed into law by Murphy. (S2 got its start in 2017, when then-Gov. Chris Christie and then-Senate President Stephen Sweeney made a deal that swapped the increase in the gasoline tax Christie wanted for cuts in state aid to districts that had been receiving adjustment aid.)

The 2024-25 fiscal year is supposed to be the last year of S2 and its cuts, but so far a new funding formula has not been put forth.

Brick Township has had its state funding cut by $23 million under S2. For 2024-25, it is one of 17 districts in Ocean County that are seeing aid cuts. Of the remainder, 11 are receiving increases and one — the Ocean County Vocational Technical District — is seeing its funding stay the same as last year's amount.

Overall, Ocean County saw the greatest reduction in aid of any of the 21 counties, with a 6.65 percent reduction in aid overall. Monmouth County saw a 2.89 percent reduction in aid to its schools, and Cape May County saw a 2.21 percent reduction. All of the other counties saw an overall increase in aid.

Read more:

• New NJ School Aid Amounts Released: Who's Getting More?
• 5 Big Takeaways From Murphy's Budget Address