Montclair, NJ – During a public hearing for the 2023-24 Montclair school district budget on Wednesday, district administrators announced they were still working on settling a $5.5 million deficit in the budget, which will be presented to the Board of Education for final approval on May 15.
The district will spend the next week and a half looking at areas for additional budget reductions, specifically in the central office, the pupil services department and schools that need to enhance efficiencies – Montclair High School, Glenfield Middle School, Renaissance at Rand Middle School, Hillside School and Nishuane School – while also considering attrition.
Administrators did not provide details about anticipated nonrenewal numbers.
In March, the district shared a preliminary budget for the 2023-24 year, projecting $138,858,260 in revenue and $146,404,430 in expenses, leaving a preliminary deficit of $7,546,170. Leading up to the Wednesday meeting, budget reductions were made in several categories – including out-of-district tuitions, transportation and health benefits – totaling $2,096,577. Nearly half the reductions involved finding ways to cover salaries with grants and special revenue streams, instead of using the general fund.
The remaining deficit totals $5,449,593.
The board’s finance and budget committee met several times with the Montclair Education Association and the Montclair Principals Association over the past couple months to discuss the budget, committee chair Melanie Deysher said at the Wednesday meeting. The most recent committee meeting notes posted to the district website, dated March 23, show two budget meetings in March with the unions and district administrators. The committee also met with the unions three times in late April, Deysher said at the meeting.
“The intention is to build the budget as collaboratively and as transparently as possible,” Deysher said.
But at the March 20 meeting, Cathy Kondreck, the Montclair Education Association president, said the union had not been given an adequate seat at the table, despite their requests.
And at the Wednesday meeting, Kondreck said she was unaware how the remaining deficit would be handled.
“What is being submitted to the board for approval, and ultimately to the state for approval regarding the budget, is not something that we have either heard or seen yet,” Kondreck said at the Wednesday meeting. “As I stated at the March BOE meeting, the MEA will never agree to nonrenewals being the answer to a budget deficit.”
Last spring, the district had to resolve a $3 million budget deficit, and the district issued 83 nonrenewal letters to district staff – 48 to paraprofessionals and 35 to teachers. The cuts received backlash from the Montclair Education Association and families, concerned about how the cuts would affect learning in the district. By fall 2023, every teacher issued a nonrenewal notice had received a new offer from the district, but many had already accepted jobs elsewhere, Kondreck said.
Beginning the school year with a period of old employees being hired back and new employees being hired at the last minute caused the district to start the year in a deficit, Kondreck said at the Wednesday meeting. The nonrenewal decisions made it seem like the administration had not considered all avenues when balancing the budget, she said.
“A very wise person once said to me, ‘a budget is made to highlight and prioritize your values,’” Kondreck said at the Wednesday meeting. “What do you value? What does the district value? What do we as a community value? Next week, our values will be exposed for everyone to see. I hope we can be proud of what is exhibited.”
COMMUNITY CONCERNS
At the Wednesday meeting, only two of three public comments addressed the budget hearing.
Parent Andrew Gideon said he felt concerned about the scheduling of the public meetings around the budget.
“At this point, we are looking at just shy of $5.5 million in cuts still to be made,” Gideon said. “Whatever happens is going to be approved at the next meeting, and we have no idea what that whatever happens is going to be.”
In supporting the switch to a Type II school system in 2021, Gideon said he was hoping for more transparency and communication, with the budget process falling to the district, not a board of school estimate.
“It’s certainly not the sort of process for which I was hoping when we shifted,” Gideon said.
And with only a week and a half to approve the 2023-24 final budget, Gideon is looking to future budget seasons.
“I would urge you, please, to make a schedule for next year where the public is more involved and certainly more informed,” Gideon said.
Parent Obie Miranda-Woodley asked that the diversity of staff at Nishuane School be maintained.
“It’s so important that staff reflect the student diversity,” Miranda-Woodley said. “They need to see people who look like them and share similar cultural and ethnic values.”
Miranda-Woodley was part of an effort at Nishuane several years ago to diversify staff, and “we were heard,” she said.
“Please make sure that these teachers remain in the district, specifically at Nishuane,” Miranda-Woodley said.
Last year, Miranda-Woodley also spoke at a board meeting during budget season, also advocating for the importance of staff diversity.
Her daughter had been nervous to wear her hair naturally to school after a classmate harassed her about it, Miranda-Woodley said at the May 12, 2022 board meeting. But her daughter finally got up the courage to wear her hair naturally.
Miranda-Woodley said she emailed her daughter’s teacher explaining the situation and how her daughter’s choosing to wear her hair naturally was a big deal.
After school, Miranda-Woodley’s daughter came home and said she and her teacher had been “hair twins” that day and that the teacher told her she looked beautiful, Miranda-Woodley said.
“Representation matters, and I really hope that we do not lose the diversity in our schools and the staff,” she said.
BUDGET DETAILS
The amount set to be raised by taxes is $128,008,540 for 2023-24. The tax levy for 2022-23 was $125,498,569.
The district is projecting $138,858,260 in general fund revenues – $128,303,640 from local sources, $10,457,817 from state sources and $96,803 from federal sources; $7,509,399 in special revenue funds – $300,000 from local sources, $3,059,556 from state sources, $3,607,335 from federal sources and $542,508 from other sources; and $2,241,991 in debt service funds – $1,512,652 from local sources and $729,339 from state sources.
Total net revenue, including general and special funds, totals $148,067,142.
Salaries make up 61% of the district’s expenses, totaling $84,048,016. Benefits are the next largest category, 18% of expenses, totaling $25,440,986. Other expense categories include transportation, totaling $8,849,485; facilities, totaling $7,129,374; tuitions, totaling $6,742,711; and other, totaling $6,647,688.
The 2023-24 general fund expenses for instruction are projected to decrease by more than $3 million from the 2022-23 school year. The biggest changes are a decrease in regular program instruction spending of $2,750,105 and a decrease in special education instruction spending of $425,565. Additional decreases in spending affect vocational programs instruction and other instructional program instruction.
The proposed budget increases spending for basic skills and remedial instruction, bilingual education instruction, school-sponsored co-curricular or extracurricular activities instruction and school-sponsored athletics instruction.
Funding for before- and after-school programs, other supplemental and at-risk programs, and community services programs operations will remain consistent.
The district is also projecting a $465,487 increase in support service expenses – $86,076,296 for the 2023-24 year, compared with to $85,610,809 for 2022-23 year. Support services include costs for child study teams, guidance counselors, student transportation services and more.
The 2023-24 user-friendly budget is available on the district website.
— Talia Wiener/Montclair Local
I don’t understand. I thought we passed the Elected BoE public question to eliminate these feelings of deja vu?
Ms. Kondreck states “…a budget is made to highlight and prioritize your values…”
That is not true. A budget is made to guide how an organization manages cash flow, assets, expenses, and income. It is a financial document. It would build more confidence if a teaching professional (and a representative of a teachers union, at that) could convey more clearly what actual things mean, rather than what a certain sector of employees wish they would mean. “Values” will not erase the deficit.
“Values” have very much to do with a school district, which is not just another business, where profit and greed are the guiding principles. That’s her point. She is not suggesting that smart financial leadership not be part of the equation.
Excuse me, MP. What? Unions exist to advocate for their members. Full stop.
When the MEA creates an off-shoot with Benevolent in it’s legal title, let me know.I miss the good ol’ days when you threw the aides under the proverbial bus to get paid. And, yup, we’re still funding ‘permanent’ headcount with unsustainable revenue sources. And then we whine about the shortfall when the revenue sources don’t keep pace with the union contracts. And that you are trying to grow a financial model that is not scalable. Brilliant.
And all that aside, why does the MEA still get a full copy of the budget and we, the Wallet Openers, only get the redacted, User Friendly Version?
Same old, same old. It still takes Montclair’s compacted version of a solar cycle to complete a full Board turnover.
Like the Firefighters & Senior Officer Unions. They advocated for the Glen Ridge contract for themselves, not because it was in the best interest of Montclair taxpayers. That kind of union? That kind of values? You and the FD unions are the only ones that are out of favor. I’m thankful for the other unions we work with.
I feel bad we make the Police Dept work out of their antiquated and unhealthy building. Something that has been going on for more than a decade, at least. If their conditions were the conditions of any school, there would be torches and pitchforks around 205. But, that is not how we roll. We are going to give the capital to the skating rink and a second round of capital to the skateboard park.
Phew, I finally worked in the comparison of irresponsible skateboarders getting an ordinance (discretion allowed) and a state-of-the-art
supermarketskate park of their own to the horrors of off-leash dogs in a thread on the school budget!Frank,
As usual, your outrage is impressive; Your facts not so much.
The district is the entity that typically throws the aides under the bus. Remember Penny Mac? The union typically fights like hell to have them rehired and their benefits restored. The district’s plan was once to outsource them completely.
And oh my Lord, a union’s job is to advocate for its members. How did you figure that one out?
And no, you as a “wallet-opener” don’t get to participate in the negotiations. You get to vote for the board members, who get to dictate to the union with a little negotiation thrown in. That’s why you and many others presumably carried on for the elected board.
The nonsense spewed by some in this town about the horror of teachers collectively bargaining for a raise — and how that should eliminate them from participating in what’s beneficial for the children they teach — is pitiful. Which is not — to be frank, Frank — to say that the teachers should be immune from its share of compromise and sacrifice.
Montclair Public: You seem to be an educator, at least an advocate for them. Do you know what it takes to create and build a business?
When you describe the “guiding principles” of business as “profit and greed” — as you have many times before in this forum — you offend plenty of people and embarrass your cause. Profit and greed. Straight out of the faculty lounge.
When you invoke “values” as some magical thinking that lets teachers unions get away with some of the insulting flim-flammery that passes for education these days, you’ve totally lost the plot. Do these magical “values” have any plans to make up for the Covid education losses of the past three years? Do these “values” plan to make up the school budget deficit? If as I suspect these values are just “union values” then just say so.
I love teachers. But in all my years of observing eduation (my kids and my grandkids and all the rest) I have yet to see one of them come home from school and announce, “I want to be a teachers union Rep, Mommy!”
The annual budget setting process is not a negotiation. That is why they can leave the MEA out of the loop. It is a courtesy to collaborate with an important stakeholder group like the MEA. The district only has to hold a public hearing to let taxpayers have their day. BYW, Thanks for letting us at least vote while we leave the real oversight work up to the MEA.
If you need to to pull the Montclair Times articles to check your facts, please be my guest. It does pain me to see the revisionist history, but not unexpected. I remember the district hired an organization (MEA) that was against standardized testing to write customized tests that the stakeholders could support and then they mysteriously were sabotaged by Russian (?) hackers. And which the district achievement continued to wallow in mediocrity for another 10 years highlighted by downward testing scores and increasing achievement gap. That history?
PS: I voted against an elected school board for the very reason it would not prevent what we are seeing today. I hates being right.
To Frank’s 5;15 post above —- “the annual budget setting process is ot a negotiation. that is why they can leave the MEA out of the loop. It is a COURTESY to collaborate with an important stakeholder group like the MEA”. Once again, there’s their over the top sense of entitlement!
I think one reason the Jackson’s then Hurlock’s BoSE may have lost respect for the district to manage its finances is LY; staring everyone in the face this year. We just blew $4MM. Way to go parents & caregivers! Let’s not forget to also credit the award-winning PTA. Same old, same old. Its like Watchunging reruns of F Troop.