Proposed district tax levy up 3.27%

School taxes would increase $187.71 for the average homeowner under the preliminary budget outlined at the Board of Education meeting Tuesday, March 12.

The board will hold a public hearing and final vote on the 2024-25 budget April 20.

Last year, school taxes rose $235.44 for the average homeowner.

The tax levy grew 4.48 percent for the 2023-24 school year. That was the biggest increase in at least a dozen years.

The levy would rise 3.27 percent in 2024-25, according to the preliminary budget. The spending plan would use a health-care adjustment and banked cap to exceed the state’s 2 percent cap on annual tax levy increases.

For the 2023-24 budget, the budget used a health-care adjustment but no banked cap to exceed the 2 percent cap. New Jersey allows local governing bodies to preserve their unused spending authority as banked cap in years when they raise the tax levy by less than 2 percent.

The preliminary budget for 2024-25 is $76.9 million, compared with $76.3 million a year earlier, up 0.79 percent.

The tax levy provides 83.6 percent of the district’s revenue.

More than half, 57 percent, of the budget goes to salaries, and 23 percent to employee benefits.

The areas with the biggest spending increases in the preliminary budget are school administration, up 8.1 percent, and employee benefits, up 5.9 percent.

Spending on facilities would fall 45.4 percent and tuition would decline 16.2 percent.

The district expects to receive about $5.5 million in state aid in 2024-25, compared with about $5.6 million in 2023-24.

State aid has been falling for the past seven years. In 2017-18, the district received $14.6 million in state aid.