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Schools

$65 Tax Hike OK'd in Hopatcong School Budget

No layoffs in spending plan; staff being shuffled and electives being added to high school.

A chastised but feisty Hopatcong Board of Education approved Monday a 2013-14 budget that begins to restore some of the classes and programs whose absence residents blamed for a decline in the education offered by the district.

The $35.339 million budget will raise the school taxes for the owner of a home assessed at the borough average of $214,610 by $64.39 to $3,583.

The spending plan calls for raising $23.423 million in local taxes, up $459,285 from 2012-13. The local tax levy rose 1.99-percent, below the state mandated 2-percent cap, board president Clifford Lundin said.

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Lundin said the recent reassessment done by the borough factored into the new budget as it lowered the total value of the borough by nearly $600 million from 2012 and dropped the average value of a home from $360,000 to $214,610.

More important, he said, the budget shows an effort by the board to address criticism leveled last year following a sharp drop in Hopatcong’s ranking in a survey done by NJ Monthly.

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The public reacted sharply to that report and showed their concern by applying in increased numbers to other state high schools under the state’s choice schools program.

Among the chief criticism of the district was the lack of Advanced Placement courses at the high school.

Lundin said the budget will support the addition of eight more AP courses next year. 

The NJ Monthly survey, he said, was taken in the 2011 school year, when following the defeat of the school budget, widespread layoffs occurred.

Since then, Lundin said, the district has been trying to within the state tax levy cap and wrestling with reduced state aid.

“We are listening,” he said. “Come back. Don’t leave.”

The new budget was drafted without any layoffs, he said.

A change will be made at the middle school, where because of reduced enrollment, one teaching team will be shifted to other schools. The result is that 4.5 teaching positions will be shifted.

Some of those positions will be used to open three new high school electives, home economics, criminal justice and athletic training, said guidance director Gina Cinotti. The new courses were the top three choices in a survey of students, she said.

Superintendent Charles Maranzano Jr. said despite what the magazine survey said, the state department in its latest quality assessment done in 2011 showed across a broader measurement of achievement, Hopatcong schools were ranked as a high achieving district.

He said the board faced a “perfect storm” of factors, including increased expenses, reduced funding, unfunded state and federally mandated high expectations, and the cumulative effect of years of failed budgets.

He presented a brief summary of some achievements.

The Class of 2012 had 169 graduates and 85 percent went on to a post-secondary education, including 34-percent who attended four-year colleges.

Maranzano said the district has taken many cost-cutting steps, including entering into cooperative purchasing programs, shared services, savings in transportation and energy through cooperative efforts and the construction of the solar project that will save the district $3 million in electric costs through 2027.

Going forward, the district is planning some key maintenance projects, including addressing the soil erosion problem at the high school football field, the center steps to Tulsa Trail School, sidewalks and paving at several schools, fence repairs, heating and air conditioning repairs at the high school and replacement of high school windows and the replacement of light bulbs with LED bulbs.

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