Hoboken Board of Education Presents Preliminary Budget - Including Explanation of a "Fatal Error" and Initial Budgeting that was "below adequacy"

Hoboken Board of Ed Meeting 
March 18, 2021

At a virtual ZOOM meeting on Thursday, March 18, the Hoboken Board of Education introduced the preliminary budget for the 2021-22 school year. You can watch the meeting by clicking HERE. The meeting includes a number of Powerpoint slides and is about 20 minutes in duration.  

After last year's nearly 10% tax increase (justified by "rocketing enrollment") the intent for 2021-22 was evidently to go into this budget cycle with a 0% tax levy increase for the taxpayers of Hoboken. 

Unfortunately, that was not to be. It seems that the preliminary budget submitted to the county contained a "fatal error" (terminology used by the district at the board meeting) which supposedly confounded the county administrator. After some investigation it was found that the school district was proposing spending "below adequacy" as determined by the NJ Department of Education for the students of the district. Because of some NJDOE rules (explained in some detail at the meeting), the district was not allowed to present anything other than a 2% or more increase in the levy to the county for the preliminary 2021-22 budget. 

This NJDOE rule is to make sure local communities are spending enough money on the education of their children. An adequate level of funding is determined by the state using detailed formulas. The original budget submitted to the county was determined to be below adequacy and thus was rejected by the county (this is explained in the video from 11:00 to 13:30). 

                  Explanation of "Fatal Error" and "spending below adequacy" 

No doubt there will be more to discuss as the budget process goes from preliminary to final approval- a process that will take about a month. To be clear, it is good that these issues were resolved with the county ahead of the preliminary budget presentation and not at a later point. 

No Hoboken Board of Education budget meeting would be complete without some mention of the money sent to Hoboken's charter schools and the March 19th meeting was no exception. There will be an increase in the money sent to Hoboken's three charter schools-- Hoboken Charter, Elysian Charter, and the Hola Dual Language Charter School. 

The Board had no questions on the budget and there were no questions from the public. If there were any press watching, they did not ask any questions.

The Hoboken School budget will be financed from several sources, including a local property tax levy. We do not now the actual amount yet but last year it came to $53.1 million and the year before that it was $48.3 million.