NJ's Montclair Cuts School Staff and Mulls March Tax-Hike Vote

Watch NJ's Montclair Cuts School Staff and Mulls March Tax-Hike Vote - Bloomberg on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00Erin how did we get here? Yeah so this the news of this deficit was revealed in July but it was

00:07a long time in the making and basically what we know about this shortfall is that it comes from

00:13escalating transportation costs unbudgeted health care expenses and then rising special education

00:20costs. So basically now that the district has realized that these unbudgeted expenses are far

00:28outpacing revenues they have to address this shortfall because in New Jersey you cannot a school

00:34district cannot operate in the deficit so they're now looking at their options for how they're going

00:40to address this gap and the cuts are part of that. Well I mean especially with cuts what does that

00:46mean for students what does it mean for parents what does it mean for teachers and anyone who's

00:50employed by the system? Yeah these are sweeping cuts and it's definitely causing a lot of upset

00:57in the community some of the positions that are being cut include curriculum support teachers

01:03teachers who kind of intervene with math and reading for example and then there's also school-based

01:10counseling services there's also programs including world languages at an elementary level so really

01:17these these are very sweeping cuts that really are forcing the community to reckon with choices

01:24and whether they will accept higher taxes to stave off deeper cuts or whether even more cuts are to

01:32come. How much of this is very specific to New Jersey and Montclair versus a wider issue that school

01:38systems are grappling with right now? Yeah of course some of these issues are very specific to Montclair

01:44but really it does speak to a much broader challenge that all school districts all across the country are

01:51facing at the moment. Basically since the end of Covid aid that the federal federal aid that was coming to

01:58schools to respond to the pandemic now that that's over with schools are kind of facing an environment where

02:05inflation the teacher shortage costs are just rising far faster than their revenues. So it's prompting a real

02:13moment of reckoning for a lot of them of how they're going to right size their budgets where where they may have to cut or pull

02:19back and it really kind of is emblematic of the bigger strains that public schools are facing.