TOMS RIVER, NJ — On Friday night, hundreds of fans packed the stands at Toms River High School North’s Gernerd Field to watch the Mariners’ football team play for a spot in the state sectional championships.
Students clad in blue and gold filled the stands, yelling their support to the 80 or so players on the Toms River North football team as they took on Kingsway, urged and led by the Mariners’ cheerleaders.
The hundred-member Marching Mariners band showed off the fruits of their hours of practice during the halftime performance, belting out music and marching with precision as their brass and silver instruments sparkled under the lights, the flags of the color guard swinging and swaying in time with the music.
It could be the last football game played at Toms River North by the Mariners, who lost to Kingsway, 19-14, ending their 2019 season. It could be the last because the 2020 football season for the Mariners — as well as football at Toms River East and Toms River South in 2020 — is at risk.
Anticipated cuts of $5.3 million to the 2020-2021 Toms River Regional School District budget, necessitated in large part by an expected $4.3 million cut in state aid, could see to that. Clubs, kindergarten and all sports — including football — may be on the chopping block.
“This stuff keeps me up at night every night,” Superintendent David Healy said Thursday, hours after laying out the dire situation the district faces for the Toms River Regional Board of Education. “This is a very emotional process for all of us. There are young lives in the balance.”
The district has been making cuts going back to 2009-2010, when the state cut $10 million in aid when then-Gov. Chris Christie slashed funding to all school districts. Those cuts were compounded when Superstorm Sandy devastated the Shore, taking out $2.2 billion in ratables and 10,000 homes in Toms River alone. Seven years later, there are still more than $500 million in ratables that have not returned to the property tax roles. Christie’s 2 percent cap on property tax levy increases has handcuffed the district further, forcing it to make cuts even as expenses in vital areas rose.
“We’ve been taking from other places (in the budget to make ends meet) for years,” said William Doering, the district’s business administrator. “If you’re in a circumstance where you have wiggle room it’s one thing. We have no wiggle room left.”
“It is unimaginable to me the position that we’re in and that we’re going to be in if things don’t change,” he said.
It’s why, Healy said, school district officials are continuing to fight the state aid cuts that were put in place in the summer of 2018 under S2, the law that amended part of the 2008 School Funding Reform Act.
They have no choice but to fight, Doering said. Otherwise, “our next five years are going to be cataclysmic.”
“Everything’s on the table”
Healy and Doering have been warning for nearly two years that devastating cuts were coming, cuts as a result of the push by state Sen. President Stephen Sweeney for the school funding legislation known as S2.
Sweeney unveiled S2, which targets so-called “adjustment aid,” during the 2017 state budget process. He used it as a bargaining chip in wrangling with Christie that led to the state government shutdown that became better known for Christie’s “Beachgate” photo.
Sweeney said — and continues to say — school districts receiving that aid are overfunded, and their residents are not paying their fair share of property taxes to support their schools. He has made claims that Toms River and other districts are receiving the adjustment aid for students that are no longer in the district.
“Sweeney knows that isn’t true,” Healy said. “We don’t get paid for phantom kids. Our adequacy number and our per-pupil costs are based on current enrollments.”
“We tax less because we spend less,” Healy said.