Freehold Borough Schools Will See A $3.16M Increase In State Aid

Freehold NJ

10 March, 2022

5:24 PM

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FREEHOLD, NJ — The Freehold Borough school district is set to see a 16.56 percent increase in its school budget for the Fiscal Year 2023, which is higher than other Freehold school districts such as Freehold Regional and Freehold Township. Earlier in the month, Gov. Phil Murphy's administration proposed $19.2 billion for New Jersey pre-K to 12 schools for the Fiscal Year 2023 budget, including an additional $649.8 million for K-12 aid to put K-12 "formula" aid at $9.92 billion. Freehold Borough schools will get a total of $22,265,744 in state aid from Murphy's budget, which is an increase of $3,163,770 from the previous year. Freehold Township schools will get a total of $5,004,785 in state aid from Murphy's budget, which is an increase of $241,366 from the previous year. The Freehold Regional school district is the only one that will receive less funding in the fiscal year 2023. Their budget was reduced from $34,049,968 in 2022 to $30,550,220 in 2023. New Jersey's school-funding formula for state aid comes from S2 — a controversial law passed in 2018 that changed how the state determines to allocate its funding for each district. FY2023 would be the fifth of seven state budgets that S2 will impact. "The demographics of the state were out of sync to where the money was headed," Murphy said. "So we agreed to S2, which has a seven-year catch-up to where the demographics are in the state." Read more: Gov. Murphy's $49B NJ Budget Focuses On Property Taxes, Relief State aid has a significant impact on a district's decision to raise local property taxes. Many argue that aid cuts or flat spending each year give them justification to raise what are already the highest property taxes in the country.