West Orange School Budget: Tax Hike, Teacher Cuts Approved

WEST ORANGE, NJ — Property taxes will rise for West Orange homeowners under the latest school budget despite several cost-cutting measures, including the elimination of 24 staff positions.

The West Orange Board of Education held a public hearing for their 2024-2025 budget on Monday, unanimously voting to adopt the district’s new spending plan.

West Orange Superintendent Hayden Moore gave a presentation about the budget, which will come with a hike of $262 for the average homeowner’s school portion of their taxes – about a 2.77 percent increase (watch the budget presentation below; video is cued to Moore’s comments).

Administrators previously said the district was looking at cutting as many as 30 to 40 staff positions in an effort to balance the budget. The final adopted version has 24 districtwide staff reductions, most of which were accomplished by not replacing retiring and resigning staff members. Some staff members were transferred to fill open positions, Moore noted.

The list of cuts includes:

• 1 preschool principal
• 1 supervisor of technology and engineering
• 1 librarian
• 1 technology position
• 6 high school teaching positions (math, science, English)
• 1 multi-lingual learner teaching position
• 2 academic support teaching positions
• 2 career education middle school teaching positions
• 1 world language teaching position
• 1 central office administrative assistant
• 1 high school clerical aide
• 1 special education teaching position
• 3 elementary school teaching positions
• 2 middle school physical education teaching positions

Moore said other cost-cutting moves include reductions to supplies and equipment and cuts to outsourced contracting services. The district also “renegotiated” its health care benefits plan, which some people said they are concerned about during the public comment portion of the meeting.

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Board President Brian Rock said that a cut to the district’s state aid from New Jersey was a key factor in this year’s budget crunch (watch the video below, cued to his comments).

West Orange is seeing a 2.05 percent cut in state aid this year, which comes to about $700,000. West Orange is one of only two Essex County districts to see a loss in K-12 aid for fiscal year 2025 – although it saw a large increase last year, when it got an additional $4,915,635 from the state (about 16.74 percent). Read More: West Orange Schools May Lose State Aid (Here's How Much)

According to Rock, state school aid largely comes in four “big buckets”: equalization aid, special education, transportation and security. The formula for the latter three is relatively simple, he said – “essentially, if your enrollment goes up, they go up.” But when it comes to equalization aid, it gets a bit more complicated, he continued.

“That is essentially what you could call need-based aid for school districts … If the district collects its fair share – what the state thinks that we can collect through property taxes – the state will then fill in the rest of our adequacy budget … what they think it costs to educate our kids,” he explained.

Rock said the local fair share is based on the equalized valuation of property in town, which apparently went up 7.9 percent – or about $500 million. Meanwhile, the total income of everybody who lives in West Orange went up 15.7 percent, or about $400 million.

“Now on paper, what the state is telling us is that suddenly we’re rich – I don’t really feel that way – on paper we should have a lot of money that we should be able to collect, and if that were true, we wouldn’t need as much aid,” Rock said.

“The problem is all that money is out there on paper, but we can’t collect,” Rock said, adding that West Orange isn’t the only district seeing cuts this year and “there’s really no way to tell what’s going to happen next year – this could be a blip and next year looks much better.”

• See Related: Property Taxes In West Orange (See Latest 5-Year Breakdown)

Some attendees at the meeting spoke about the budget during public comment, asking administrators to reconsider the staffing cuts and find the money elsewhere. One speaker pointed to a line item for $10.1 million in the budget for facilities acquisition and construction services (watch the video below).

“We are a school district, not a construction company,” she argued. “If we can’t afford $10.1 million, don’t spend it this year.”

A teacher at Roosevelt Middle School said he was concerned about a lack of communication and information about the change to employee health benefits – and the potential impact on staff members’ families. Those changes are set to take effect on July 1, he said.

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