'Legislative Child Abuse And Neglect': Toms River Regional To Sue NJ Over State Aid Cuts

TOMS RIVER, NJ — The Toms River Regional Board of Education has announced it will sue the state of New Jersey over the state's aid cuts to the district, calling the cuts "legislative child abuse."

That decision to file a lawsuit over the aid cuts comes as the school board rejected the district's $264.5 million tentative budget for the 2024-25 school year, a decision that leaves the district's budget up in the air.

Superintendent Michael Citta and William Burns, the district's attorney, announced the lawsuit at a special meeting of the board on July 3, which was held for the board to vote on an updated tentative budget.

The district entered the budget season anticipating a $26.5 million gap in revenues, a number that Citta has said since early April would mean the loss of 368 positions and more. Read more: 368 Job Cuts, 'Ridiculous' Class Sizes In Toms River: What Slashing $26.5M Would Mean

At the special meeting, Citta said the cuts would be more than just staffing. Extracurricular activities — sports, marching band, theatre programs — would be gone, along with the district's full-day kindergarten.

"There is no way to even propose that. What they have done is nothing short of legislative child abuse and neglect," Citta said. (You can watch his full speech at the bottom of this article.)

Citta has spent the weeks since insisting there would be a positive solution to the district's shortfall. At the special meeting, he expressed anger at the lack of response by the state to the financial crisis facing Toms River Regional, which has seen its aid reduced by a cumulative $137 million under S2.

At the same time, the district is more than $91 million under adequacy, which is the number defined by the state Department of Education as the minimum amount of funds a district should be spending to provide students with a thorough-and-efficient education, which is a requirement under the New Jersey constitution.

Burns, in announcing the hiring of the Busch Law Group to "exhaust all legal remedies" to get funding restored, said the state has "neglected their constitutional duty to ensure that all New Jersey public school students, including our students, receive a thorough and efficient education."

"We can no longer sit patiently, waiting for the state and the Department of Education to do the right thing, while the district falters," Burns said.

While the district pursues the lawsuit — in what is likely to be a long, drawn-out battle — the immediate problems of funding the 2024-25 school year remain.

The school board had approved a tentative budget in April, but that package relied on a plan to request a $26.5 million aid advance from the state — a proposal that was torpedoed by state officials for schools across the state shortly afterward. That tentative budget was never approved by the state. It also was never rejected, with the state waiting for Toms River to submit a balanced tentative budget.

Citta, in a telephone conversation on July 5, said he presented a balanced budget — as he's required to do — to the school board at the July 3 meeting. That new tentative budget would have filled the $26.5 million gap in part by increasing the property tax levy by 9.9 percent — which would raise $13.1 million. Another $12.4 million would be raised by selling various assets of the district, appraisals of which are under way.

The school board rejected that tentative budget, however.

What happens next?

With the school board having rejected the tentative budget, Citta said the state Department of Education can take a look at it and decide whether it will override the school board and approve the tentative budget, with the 9.9 percent increase.

That could result in the sale of various district properties, including the administrative offices at 1144 Hooper Ave., the district's maintenance yard at 123 Walnut St., and the district's transportation facility on Route 37— where its school buses are stored at night and where its mechanics work — along with pieces of land next to Joseph A. Citta Elementary, next to Toms River High School East, and next to East Dover Elementary.

Those asset sales, however, are one-time revenue injections and the district would start the next budget cycle with a deficit.

Another possibility is the state could simply take over the Toms River Regional District, something Burns said was threatened by state officials.

That could mean the state forcing the sale of other property, including a school building, as is happening in neighboring Jackson Township. That district is being forced to sell an elementary school — over the objections of its school board and in spite of the fact that "temporary" trailers are used for student classrooms at another school in the district.

Another possibility: the smaller towns in the Toms River Regional district seek to leave the regional district. Lawrence Cuneo, the mayor of Pine Beach, said it's a question residents in his borough have asked.

"I've had calls saying why can't we join someone else (another district)," Cuneo said at the July 3 meeting.

"You really don't want me to stay as mayor if you're asking me to do that for Pine Beach, to leave the Toms River Regional School District and go somewhere else," Cuneo, who is a teacher in the Toms River district, said he told the residents who asked.

"That's what's happening in the real world," Cuneo said.

If the state takes over the district, it could come in and slash jobs and programs.

Burns said that is among the threats state officials have made, while also suggesting the district ask taxpayers to vote on items such as co-curricular activities and sports, and on kindergarten.

The district has provided full-day kindergarten since the fall of 2015, after a long battle to get the program in place.

Kindergarten is not mandated by state law, however, early childhood education has become seen as such a critical stepping stone for children that the Murphy administration has poured billions of dollars into providing preschool programs in public schools across the state in the last five years.

Toms River Regional is one of the few districts that has not been approved to participate in the state's preschool expansion program.

If the district put kindergarten and its co-curricular and extracurricular program funding — the programs together account for less than $3 million in the district's budget — to voters, the soonest it could be considered would be the fall, potentially resulting in programs being cut halfway into the school year if voters rejected the questions.

A rejection of kindergarten would leave parents scrambling for private kindergarten options — something that would be out of reach for more than a third of the families in the 14,500-student district. About 6,000 of the district's students qualify for the federal free and reduced cost lunch program, putting them at or below the federal poverty line.

The repercussions of selling properties, beyond the fact that they are a one-time budget fix, go even deeper. Selling the transportation yard means the district would have to find alternate parking for school buses. That would likely mean the elimination of student parking at Toms River High School North, which has the largest available parking. Selling the office building at 1144 Hooper Ave. would force the district's preschool program into one of the schools — where space already is at a premium.

An examination by Patch in March of the district's building occupancy showed the district's classroom space already is heavily used. Read more: Just Close Schools, Murphy Says To Toms River, Districts With Aid Cuts

Closing a school to sell it would force redistricting, with a domino effect on school start times and class sizes. Forcing a high school to be sold would result in split sessions to accommodate all of the students.

Increased class sizes have repeatedly been shown to negatively affect students' learning. Split sessions (and a potential lack of extracurricular activities) create additional opportunities for kids with too much time on their hands to get into trouble. Getting jobs isn't possible for most kids until they are at least 16 years old, as many employers won't hire 14- and 15-year-olds.

"The pleas for our students have been met with accusations, empty promises, and direct threats," Burns said. "A state takeover of our schools and school district has been threatened. The forced closure of district schools has been threatened. The slashing of jobs that have a direct impact on our classrooms and our kids has been threatened."

"And when Superintendent Michael Citta and Business Administrator William Doering pushed back, saying we cannot and will not cut programs or jobs that impact kids, and reminded the state that they were legally required to certify only a budget that provides for a thorough and efficient education, the revocation and forfeiture of Mike and Bill’s certificates were threatened," Burns said.