TOMS RIVER – Residents are hoping a Change.org petition will change the governor’s mind on school aid cuts.
With the newly stated goal of reaching 15,000+ signatures, Toms River Regional Schools mother Bridget Maillard, who started the petition, said her Save Our Students drive will show Democrat Governor Phil Murphy that the cuts aren’t acceptable to this community.
Maillard gave an interview on a local radio station last week to talk about the petition.
“Knowing all of the opportunities I had available to me when I went to school, I felt very strongly that when you have a district this size operating at the second lowest cost per student in the state … to experience this type of loss of funding and lost opportunity and poor educational conditions for our students, it was at the top of my list to start this grassroots campaign,” Maillard said. “This is not okay to do to us—we’re so large and so efficient, and the impacts are so severe not only on our students, but on our town.”
The petition, which is also circulating as a hard copy in some 55+ adult communities, has nearly 11,000 at press time.
The school district lost $70 million in state school aid due to what it and other local districts call a flawed funding formula. Toms River, Brick, Jackson and Middletown had their emergency appeals for this year’s state aid denied.
Toms River and other districts plan to sue the state over the funding formula.
