The average homeowner in Tabernacle, with an assessed home value of $264,057, will pay an additional $158.43 in K-8 school taxes as a result of the school district budget, which the board of education passed last week.
The $14.59 million 2015–2016 budget includes a local tax rate of $1.188 per $100 of assessed property value. Of the total budget, $13.54 million will come from the general fund. Federal programs make up $224,230 of the overall school budget. The debt service makes up $829,963, which represents the amount of money utilized to pay back the debt that was used to upgrade the schools.
“We have also refinanced our debt in recent years due to the drop in interest rates,” Superintendent George Rafferty said.
State aid has been flat over the past two years, a positive for a district that has been losing students.
“Luckily, the state aid has not been tied to student enrollment numbers,” Rafferty said.
The district’s top three largest expenses are salaries at $7.97 million, health benefits at $2.367 million and district general operating cost at $1.60 million.
Educational programming remained flat, as there were no cuts in this area.
The district applied for and was awarded three ROD grants by the state Department of Education, so Tabernacle can make some upgrades to its schools and receive 40 percent funding to do that.
“The state doesn’t come out with these that often. This was called ROD Grant Four, which means it was the fourth time ever that the state Department of Education had this program,” Rafferty said.
There are three things on the horizon the board wanted to see happen to the schools, so it used these grants to acknowledge them.
Both schools will be receiving some security enhancements to the entrances, and there is an emergency generator project targeted for Tabernacle Elementary School.
There will also be new transportation upgrades that have been discussed in the past. A purchase of a new 24-passenger van is in the works.
Tabernacle receives some tuition from other school districts that send students to it because it has special programs or services that may not be offered in the students’ own school district.
The district also receives rent from Sequoia. The Lenape Regional School District has taken over the Sequoia building that is owned by Tabernacle on Carranza Road, and it pays $37,000 per year rent for the use of that building.
“Operating expenses match the amount of money we have coming in, which is a good sign,” Rafferty said.
The Tabernacle School District has fully exhausted all eligible statutory spending authority and must increase the base budget in the amount of $45,635 for upgrading technology equipment, supplies, curriculum and infrastructure to facilitate instructional needs to meet the requirements of the Common Core State Standards, Next Generation Science, iSTEM and PARCC Testing.
The district intends to complete this by June 2016.
At the budget hearing on April 27, the Tabernacle school board said it set out to accomplish three main goals for the upcoming year.
District goal №1 involved the use of assessment instruments. The board is interested in seeing where these provide meaningful information and results to the stakeholders and whether any intervention instrument is not meeting expectations.
“Two major benchmark assessments that we’ve utilized in our schools are the MAP test and the Fountas and Pinnell guided reading assessment,” Rafferty said.
The second goal dealt with the bullying bill of rights legislation. The board is seeking to increase the district and school scores on the anti-bullying bill of rights grade report and also determine the impact of the programs it is providing to support students in the school community.
The final goal was for the iSTEM initiative the district has adopted and implemented from kindergarten through eighth grade to be increased and addressed more adequately across all grade levels.
As far as the challenges facing the township school system going forward, the biggest problem is the decline in enrollment.
“We’ve lost about 100 students over five years, and we anticipate that number to continue into the next five years,” Rafferty said. “It’s out of our control, and each year we lose more students.”
On top of that, the district has unpredictable state aid funding.
“In the school systems, we get very apprehensive about this and that’s why we exhale a sigh of relief and are very grateful when we receive the same amount of money,” Rafferty said.
The district is also decreasing its fund balance, each year it has been decreasing to fill the budget — something the township gets nervous about as it toes the line of how low it can go.
