Officials Say Proposed Spending a "Maintenance" Budget

Toms River Regional Schools’ budget is growing 3.6 percent, to .

Officials are pointing toward increased pensions as a culprit for increased spending, but say the budget is flat over last year in terms of staffing and programs.

In other words, there’s no new programs and staffers to increase the budget, and neither are programs and staff on the chopping block.

 “This budget preserves the level of staffing and programs,” Business Administrator William Doering said. "We're trying to preserve what's left, and even then, it was a great challenge coming into this year's budget."

“This is a maintenance budget” said Superintendent Frank Roselli.

Instead, the district elected to to cover higher costs this year, and pointed to energy-buying credits plus a solar panel project as cost-saving measures.

Doering outlined what is keeping costs down for the district: attrition for retired positions; the district’s reverse auction for electricity, which he said is saving 10-14 percent on electricity costs; cooperative bids and a four-tier busing system; and a new solar project which will net 11 buildings new roofs and $100,000 in savings.

Doering also said that while health benefits premiums are going up, the district’s self-insurance policy is keeping the increase at a slower pace than seen elsewhere. “Self insurance for health benefits has spared us high single digit premiums,” he said.

What other expenditures are up over 2010-2011? The bulk of increased spending is from an increase to health insurance premiums, mandated special education tuition, and salaries. The PERS pension is up 11.2 percent, or approximately $357,000, Doering said.

Some of the changes in spending, as itemized by the budget presentation available on the district website:

• Basic skills/remedial instruction jumped to $1.042 million. Last year, spending here was $780,000, down from $998,000 the year prior.
• Special education instruction increased by a half million dollars to $14.5 million.
• Spending on school sponsored athletics is down by a quarter million dollars to $3.54 million.
• Contracts for the assistant superintendents stayed flat over last year, paying Roselli and Assistant Superitendent William Cardone a base salary of $179,000 each. Assistant Superintendent Debra McKenna has a $169,000 base salary.
• More students are enrolled in districts elsewhere, and the sending-receiving tuition expense jumped to $2.6 million, up from $1.8 last year. Doering said examples of the sending agreement might be tuition paid to another district that offers a special autism instructor Toms River Regional doesn't provide.