Assemblyman Alex Sauickie is defending the Jackson Township Board of Education and school district leaders against misinformation released by the Department of Education Wednesday. It was DOE’s own appointed monitor who failed to perform as required to adopt a budget by the statutory deadline, not the school district, he says. 

“The idea that your Department would now suggest a ‘failure by the board of education’ is unconscionable. I would hope before any more inaccurate information is conveyed, that your Department takes ownership of the delay in submitting a budget,” Sauickie (R-Ocean) wrote to the Department of Education Acting Commissioner Kevin Dehmer on Wednesday. 

Under state law, Jackson schools had until Monday, July 22 to submit a final budget.

At the district’s board meeting on Wednesday, July 17, the members voted down a proposed $165.7 million spending plan that eliminated 70 staff and teachers, late busing for students, and after-school enrichment programs and closed Rosenauer Elementary School, while increasing property taxes by 9.9%.

The district’s state-appointed fiscal monitor, whom the district must pay as a result of needing a loan from the state due to state aid cuts, has the power to overrule the board’s action and adopt the budget. However, at the meeting, she declined to do so and said she would report back in 48 hours. Instead, it was a week before the board heard from the monitor, delaying final action on the budget past the deadline. 

Sauickie said the DOE’s statement “not only looks to be grossly inaccurate, but shifts the blame of missing a deadline caused by your own representative.”

The DOE on Wednesday officially adopted Jackson Township School District’s budget presented at the meeting, but criticized local officials in a statement. 

“It was the state that put this district in a position of needing a loan, a state monitor, proposed selling of an elementary school, the loss of programs, several hundred teachers, as well as 35:1 student teacher ratios while operating with only $3,500 in state aid per student. Other districts are getting $30,000+ per student and can apparently afford to have $43,000 staff parties,” Sauickie wrote.

In 2018, the state enacted S2, promising a fairer distribution of public school aid, but Jackson has lost more than $22 million – half of its state funding – as a result. The district has cut more than 250 positions, curriculum, athletics, and increased class sizes. To find a revenue source, the district is being forced to sell an elementary school even as students there are still learning from nearly 30 “temporary” trailers that have been in place for decades.

 “There have been multiple meetings between myself and Assemblyman Clifton with your department, my testimony before the Assembly Budget Committee, numerous pleas on the Assembly floor…The Jackson superintendent, board president, members of the board, as well as hundreds of Jackson teachers and parents have written to this administration begging for help,” Sauickie wrote to Dehmer. “Rather than place blame, it would be great to see your department actually help this district as they, and Legislative District 12, have repeatedly asked.”

“The department owes it to the Jackson school district, its volunteer board and overworked staff to retract and correct the lies against them that the department issued,” Sauickie said.