Jackson School District must close elementary school due to $18M budget gap, NJ state says

"

The state notified the Jackson School District that it must close and sell a 60-year-old elementary school and cut 70 jobs. Faced with an $18 million budget deficit, the district will be forced to sell the Sylvia Rosenauer Elementary School. Superintendent Nicole Pormilli says it was always more likely than not that this was going to be the way things ended up after a month of uncertainty. However, she said the one-week delay on a decision did provide a little hope. Ultimately, the district had been planning for this outcome for months. The town is also moving forward with a 9.9% tax levy increase. The school board originally voted no on all these items, but the state overrode that decision to balance the budget. School officials say years of reduced state aid and static tax caps are to blame for the funding gap. Pormilli says all the kids in grades K-5 at Rosenauer will transfer to the Crawford-Rodriguez School two miles up the road. The Rosenauer staff will also make the transfer, but other positions around the district have been reduced. "We are just so thinly staffed. The operations of our facilities, our teachers, all of our support staff, very thin and everybody’s very overworked," Pormilli says. "To not fund it to the degree that is needed – to give every student an opportunity to excel and have the supports that they need – is just heartbreaking." Jackson is not the only school district that faces major cuts and tax levy increases this close to the start of the new school year. Toms River, Howell and the Freehold Regional districts are dealing with similar situations. "