The following is a letter from Thursday, Feb. 29 from the Cherry Hill Public Schools originally published on the district website.
Dear Cherry Hill Public Schools Community,
The Cherry Hill School District has been informed by the state of New Jersey that our general fund state aid for the 2024-2025 school year will be $29,477,245. This, in comparison to our 2023-2024 school year’s state aid of $36,377,427 is a $6.9 million decrease. We are shocked that the state, having increased our aid consistently during the last four years after decades of staggering and harmful underfunding, has cut our aid to less than what we received in 2022-2023. This decrease in funding is undeserved considering our steady enrollment. I have already begun the process of working with local and state leaders to obtain reasons for these cuts and to plan next steps.
As a result of these cuts, we are facing difficult financial decisions in the weeks ahead. While our successful bond referendum, passed in October 2022, allows us to continue the planned improvements of our facilities district-wide, we must now examine our costs beyond those addressed by the bond funds. The Cherry Hill Board of Education and the Cherry Hill Public Schools administration are committed not only to pursuing every possible solution to this situation, but to continuing to advocate for more state funds for Cherry Hill.
To that end, we look forward to continuing our collaboration with the Fair Funding for Cherry Hill Schools Committee, which has been essential to our previous success in securing gradual funding increases since We strongly encourage all stakeholders to become involved in the Fair Funding effort. Information regarding how to join the effort is available on the group’s Facebook page. We will conduct discussions regarding the budget implications of our state aid during our public meetings:
- The Board of Education Work Session on Tuesday March 12, 2024 and the Special Board Meeting on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, both at 6:30 p.m. in the Lewis Administration Building, 45 Ranoldo Terrace, and both live streamed.
We welcome community input at these meetings.
Miriam Stern, Board of Education President and Kwame Morton, Ed.D., Acting Superintendent of Cherry Hill Board of Education Cherry Hill Public School
