It is a time of year when parents shift their focus to getting kids ready for a new school year. In Cape May County that means preparing about 11,500 students to attend one of 29 individual schools spread across 18 school districts. These are schools for which Cape May County taxpayers paid a total school tax levy in 2023-2024 of $230 million. State aid contributed another $42 million.
The public schools system, no matter our loyalties to it or our criticisms of it, is expensive. In Cape May County it is more expensive for the taxpayer than it has ever been. The reduction in state adjustment aid has hit many districts in the county hard, removing millions of dollars from already stressed budgets. School funding under various federal COVID relief statutes is ending this month unless a school district can get a waiver for more time to spend any remaining funds.
The total decrease in state aid for Cape May County schools since 2018 amounts to $25.3 million dollars, or more than a third of all state aid in the period from the 2017-2018 school year. The state is essentially saying that the county, with its tax base, should be able to fund its school systems without the adjustment aid.
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We all want the best education possible for our young people. We cannot approach that goal as though it is primarily a funding problem.
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A look at our separate school systems tells a different story. Can Stone Harbor handle the $2,500 it lost in state aid? Surely. We have districts for whom the cuts in state aid are less of a problem than others. Five school districts, Dennis, Lower and Upper townships, along with Lower Cape May Regional and Wildwood City, together lost two-thirds of their state aid in the period from 2018. Those districts host half of the total schools in the county, 14 of 29.
All loyalties aside. All memories of going through the systems in past decades aside. It is time to get serious about whether this county can continue to support 29 schools with a total enrollment that is down 23% over the last 20 years. Has the drop in enrollment stabilized? Yes. Is it likely to grow significantly? No.
But we know that our county is somewhat hostile to young families, with few homes they can afford and a seasonal economy that does not offer attractive career opportunities. Census data shows we are losing population in young people and gaining it in retirees. We are becoming a county of grandparents, not parents.
On strictly economic grounds, looking at the increasing burden that the school tax levy already represents in many of our most populated areas, we must get serious in our exploration of structural change.
Consolidation, no doubt, will be part of the answer, but we must approach the needed rethink with our eyes wide open to successful practices developed elsewhere in New Jersey and in the nation.
The tax burden in many of our municipalities, particularly those that did not enjoy the soaring ratable increases of the last few years, demands serious consideration of efficiencies and cost control. This is not something we can leave to school administrative professionals as we have in the past, who have few incentives to examine changes that might impact the status quo.
We all want the best education possible for our young people. We cannot approach that goal as though it is primarily a funding problem.
We need the best performance we can get from our schools while taking specific steps to limit the continuous burden on taxpayers. Our problems are not primarily issues with teachers, but rather with structure and administration. The rethinking must also address persistent parental dissatisfaction with some of the curricula.
We have refrained from talking about school performance. Such discussion would show the majority of our schools below, sometimes well below, state averages.
We have at hand school scores, proficiency test results, tax profiles and the realities of state aid. We cannot afford, both for the future of our young and the burden on our taxpayers, to be content with the status quo.
We need an extended, detailed, supported public discussion on the future of the county schools. Probably the only ones who can structure and pay for such a discussion are the county commissioners, who need to stop engaging in the fiction that the schools are not their purview. Few things impact the general life of this county as much as the state of its schools.
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Quotes From the Bible
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender. Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of his fury will fail. Whoever has a bountiful eye will be blessed, for he shares his bread with the poor. Proverbs 22:6-9
