The following statement was submitted to TLS by Board of Education member and former BOE president Isaac Zlatkin in response to the State Monitor’s announcement during last night’s meeting.
In April of last year, the New Jersey Department of Education appointed Mr. Azzara as State Monitor to the Lakewood School District. Mr. Azzara is by all accounts an expert in school district finances and has been intimately involved in overseeing billions of dollars of public education money over the years. Given his expertise in school finances and board governance he is widely respected at all levels of public education in the State, including at the New Jersey Department of Education. Since Mr. Azzara’s appointment, the Department of Education has appointed two additional monitors – one who oversees special education and one who serves as Assistant State Monitor.
One of the questions that loomed in everyone’s mind when Mr. Azzara was appointed was whether he would determine that the Lakewood School District has a revenue problem (in other words the District is not receiving enough State funds to make ends meet) or whether there was a fiscal mismanagement problem. In a meeting with commissioner when monitor was appointed last year I along other board members made a case that the district has a revenue problem. Mike Azzara came out publicly last month and stated that Lakewood has a rapidly growing student population yet our state aid is essentially frozen. He added that after being in Lakewood for a year “Lakewood has revenue problem not expense problem” In addition, the tax levy is capped at 2% yet our costs continue to rise at an alarming rate. For example, our special education budget will be increasing by $5 million next year, and health insurance is going up by 13% or close to 2 million dollars.
One of the problems at the root of all this is that the School Finance Reform Act of 2008. This is the New Jersey’s school funding formula which counts approximately 5,000 children registered in Lakewood public schools for the purpose of determining state funding under its “weighted student enrollment” approach, but the District actually provides services for 30,000 public and non-public students alike. In addition, Lakewood is the fastest growing municipality in the State with an estimated population of 113,000 in 2015 and growing. Even if the School Finance Reform Act was the proper funding formula we still come up woefully short. What many people do not realize is that even with current formula, the State short changes us about approximately $10 million dollars every year if the state was using the current formula for Lakewood.
When the Commissioner of Education met with various board members, including myself, last year at the time of Mr. Azzara’s appointment, he assured everyone present that he would look into the problems with Lakewood’s exponential growth and the underfunding issues and wait for Mr. Azzara’s report to see if Lakewood really has a revenue problem.
Unfortunately, a year has passed and we are no further along today then we were at that time. In fact, I would argue that we have received a lot of empty promises from many people which is only leading to regression in Lakewood, not progression. Specifically, we have had to cut wonderful programs from our budget. Just few weeks ago, throngs of student begged the Board not to cut important classes from our budget. This is also affecting the services to non public community including the elimination of courtesy busing. This is plain wrong!
The Commissioner testified at recent budget assembly hearing that discretionary funds have been given to various school districts in New Jersey. Why wasn’t Lakewood on the list? Our students are being short-changed – plain and simple.
Given all of these inequities I had no choice, but to vote NO few weeks ago to the Lakewood School District’s proposed budget and $6 million referendum announced by the monitor last night. The Monitor overrode the Board’s defeat of the budget and, as a result, he increased taxes by $6 million which results in an increase of about $300 for the average homeowner in Lakewood. This doesn’t include another increase of $ 300 for the average homeowner if the referendum on courtesy busing passes.
The reason I voted against the budget and latest proposals by the monitor regarding courtesy busing is simple. I did so because instead of the State working with us to solve the revenue problem, the State wants our already overtaxed taxpayers to once again foot the bill for what the State should be paying. How can the average family continue to sustain tax increases of $500 to $800 per year, year in and year out? I am also gravely concerned about those on fixed incomes like senior citizens who are being taxed to their limits. Simply put, I do not believe the many students in our community should pay what the State should be paying in order to provide our students with the constitutionally mandated thorough and efficient education.
Moreover, instead of addressing these core funding issues, we are proposing making changes to busing which is an unrealistic way to solve this growing problem. I believe that even if the referendum passes, what is being proposed may only solve this year’s problem given our increased expenses, the 2% cap and exploding population growth.
I sincerely hope that as an official of the New Jersey Department of Education, Mr. Azzara will turn the heat up on his colleagues in Trenton to fix the problem. I know that the Lakewood community would stand firmly at his side in doing so. Unfortunately, it appears that he is once again looking to our taxpayers to put another band-aid on the problem. In my view this is only kicking the can down the road. We need to stop “kicking the can” and burdening future generations with problems that we should be collectively solving NOW!
Note: Mr. Zlatkin is a member and former President of the Lakewood Board of Education, however, this opinion is his own personal opinion and was not written on behalf of or at the direction of the Board of Education and it may or may not reflect the views of the other board members or the board as a whole.
[TLS]
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Why isn’t our assemblyman / senator calling for a meeting of the Chambers Education committee’s and calling on Mr.Zlatkin and Mr.Azzare and maybe even the Commissioner to testify ?
We should be all calling them with is question. If they are our representatives the should stand up for us.
We should make a massive protest in Trenton, every family should come including children.
Mr. Zlatkin,
thank you for the letter and for all your hard work for this town. Can you please explain why we shouldn’t all enroll our students in public school in order to get the the state to take us seriously? Even if they know that in reality we would not send to Public School, but if 20,000 kids are enrolled and comes first day they have to have services for us, is that not correct? Many people have suggested this and I’m sure there is a reason why we can’t or shouldn’t do it, can you please explain why not. THANK YOU
yes for once let’s stop talking about it and get the buses rolling to Trenton instead of Monsey, also the letter is very well written. Thank you Marc
Thank you, Mr. Zlatkin. You just hit a home run! Here’s my comment from the original post.
Clearly the budget is not in line with the realities (need for busing and Special Ed, besides the so called “normal” expenses like facilities and staffing) of a rapidly expanding student population in both the private and public schools. There is an obvious lack of foresight, management and planning by the BOE as well as the state but the students do not need to suffer simply because there are more of them every year. To cover the alleged $6M shortfall would take $200 for each student (a total of 30,000 students with supposedly 25,000 in private schools and 5,000 in public). The most recent census figures show the total population for Lakewood as being 53,805 (2010). If this is the number being used (as there is NO statistic available for the current number which would show a tremendous amount of growth, perhaps the most growth of any other township in the state from 2000 to the present) than ANY conclusions made by anybody, state, BOE, Azzara or otherwise are SEVERELY FLAWED and skewed AGAINST the township. If the tax revenues do not reflect the population growth, and support this deficit issue, then all municipal expenditures across the board would be in red ink. Something is wrong with this picture. State and Municipal “managers” are clearly asleep at the wheel. They don’t even have the basic demographic information to come to these conclusions. Why is the state focused on education? And this is for fiscal issues of past years and NOT the current budget. What about other municipal expenses? If the current population was really 53,805 then the cost to cover the shortfall in per-capita taxes would be $111 annually. I suspect that the population is closer to 85,000 or even 100,000 in 2015 which would bring that figure down to way under $100 a year per capita. That is well under the mandated cap percentage. Perhaps Azzara should work a little harder to earn his $145,000 salary and do some fact-finding using actual facts and the township and state should use some real numbers to balance their books before taking it out on little kids. The State government AND BOE are asleep at the wheel and the bus will crash full of innocent kids.
you are working off a bankrupt system..enrolling 30k students into the public school system will only blow it up worse, your taxes will explode and most likely implode the current situation, thus leaving everyone wondering where the money is at for all “the Services”. And remember an influx of 30k students gets you one thing ..Bigger Schools and more Certified Teachers to teach them..hense your taxes go up because you have to pay those teachers, they can not just be teachers at some of the current schools they have to be state certified teachers..Its a lose lose situation for the town. Sad, I remember when Lakewood was a bustling town with lots of prospects..now it is just a town on the verge of implosion
Why aren’t we making a 30,000 person march in Trenton with all the kids, to protest the lack of funding for Lakewood, and to finally change the ridiculous formula that is based on 5,000 public school children and not on the 30,000 children that use buses?
I say we stop paying real estate tax. We will pay for busing and all of the special ed with those funds.
If taxes are capped at 2%, how could Azzara unilaterally raise taxes by $300 per family.
Great Article Mr. Zlatkin.
The state monitor is doing his job and has to answer to his boss. The chance that he will challenge the Dept of Education is not going to happen. The state wants him to do this. So he simply doing his job while the powers that be hide behind Azzera.
I also heard from someone in the schools that promises were made last year should the private schools agree to tiered busing. The private school agreed only to have the state monitor and/or state renegade on those promises which was the reason the private schools agreed in the first place to the tiered busing which changed the entire structure of the school day our schools were accustomed to.
Has Mr Azzera ever visited the schools from 7:45AM until 5PM and see why his proposals have only hurt the education of the other 30,000 children he is also responsible to be funding and caring for.
The state monitor is not a Lakewood resident, so why should he care about our taxes going higher. He just says pay up and our taxes just go up & UP. That is abusive of power but is being promoted by the State of NJ. Just have the private school parents and senior citizens be double taxed. Time to make protests in Lakewood and Trenton and then vote out all our Politicians. Obviously they don’t have any clout in Trenton.
Trenton, Newark, Asbury Park and so many other towns get special funding. But not Lakewood. Let the middle class tax payers pay more taxes for everything in Lakewood must be Trenton thoughts.
i sent a few emails to our congressman – no ANSWER!!!
the 2% cap is a good thing… if not our taxes would be even higher
So even in a worst case scenario our taxes should not go up by something less than $100 a year tops according to the numbers above. So how come my taxes are going up from $8124 to $10972? Now tell me that’s a 2% increase. That’s closer to a 20% increase. Let’s face it, the deck is marked and stacked against all of us and our families and children will pay the price for all the lack of transparency and phony number crunching. At the end of the day, the money is going in somebody’s pocket – it just doesn’t disappear into thin air.
Im READY to ENROLL ALLLL my kids in public school. Just give me the go ahead…
This country was built on no taxation without representation. Since the state took over the school board the you have no representation. The federal court is your solution. You have to frame the dispute as the KING (GOV) Christies’ idea of “NO STUDENT LEFT BEHIND” is to make sure the student never arrives in class so they can’t be left behind. You know that if public school pupils have to walk a mile or more to school they are more likely to drop out or at least miss school when the weather is bad resulting in repeating the grade. Also is there an environmental impact statement on adding thousands of cars on Lakewood streets. Will State Troopers be directing traffic and making sure the pupil’s are not attacked or recruited by gangs such as MS 13 the Bloods and the Crips.
If you can find a lawyer that will take the case pro bono he can still collect legal fees if he wins the case if it’s environmental. If the school board sues the state he will probably be paid even if he loses.In court the state will have to explain their rational and exit strategy.
Christie is looking to run for President so the state might fold if he is accused of denying fourth grader of school buses and creating a traffic jam., if the dispute is whether to cut the fat in the school budget or school busing or if the state takeover is due to the religion of it’s board members.
I don’t think you should register you child in public school nor protest in Trenton. But you should ask your local county state and federal law enforcement agencies what are their plans for coping with the failure to provide school busing. You should also be asking elected official about the the environmental impact due to thousand of additional cars on the road. Also there is safety issues what happens if there is a health or fire emergency how will they be able to get there if there is a traffic jam.