BRICK – The Brick Township Board of Education has approved a tentative budget of $166.1 million for the 2025-26 school year.
The district will hold a public hearing for the budget on April 28 at 7 p.m. at the Professional Development Center on Hendrickson Boulevard.
According to district documents, the tentative budget is $166,132,253. Of this, $130,606,297 is to be raised by property taxes. The higher number includes the general fund, special revenues, and debt service.
Superintendent Thomas Farrell emphasized that this introduction is strictly “tentative” and that the budget will change prior to the adoption in April.
“We’re still awaiting guidance from the state on revenue options and projections,” Farrell said. “The process is very fluid and unfortunately everchanging.”
Brick is one of many school districts who suffered under S-2, a law that lowered state aid for some districts and sent it elsewhere. The budget that was introduced is for the first school year without S-2.
Under Gov. Phil Murphy’s proposed budget, the Brick School District is receiving a total of $15,390,753 in state aid, which is $871,175 or 6% more than the previous year. With new state regulations, no district was allowed an increase of more than 6%.
The increase, however, has little effect on the district’s overall adequacy gap.
“Brick Schools is $28 million under adequacy according to the state and $48 million under the local fair share,” Farrell said.
“We’re doing the best to minimize the impact on our students and our staff during these tough times. I assure you that we look at all avenues that are in the best interest of our students and our staff,” Farrell added.
Business Administrator James Edwards noted that the tentative budget will have a 0% increase in expenditures on the operations budget.
In addition, district is being limited by $2.8 million in special education funding.
“The state has used an actual enrollment in calculation rather than the 15.9% census that is used for every district regardless of actual enrollment in the past years,” Edwards said.
“Dr. Farrell and I have discussed potential options going forward with the Department of Education, because they’ve now created adjustment aid the year after S-2 got rid of all the adjustment aid, and now Brick is being affected negatively in the other direction,” Edwards added.
At the end of his reports, Edwards informed the board that elementary classroom sizes are not currently exceeding more than 30 students per class.
