BY CHRISTINE VARNO
Staff Writer

OCEANPORT - The Borough Council is expected to vote on a resolution recommending the school board trim more than $20,000 from the school budget that was rejected by voters last month.

The school district's $7.8 million spending plan failed at the polls on April 18 with 340 residents voting against adoption and 257 voting in favor.

The Borough Council has until May 15 to review the budget but is not required to make any changes to the spending plan, though it can, if it chooses, reduce or even increase the amount of money the district plans to raise and spend through taxes.

At the council workshop meeting on May 4, Councilwoman Ellynn Kahle said she, Mayor Lucille Chaump and Councilman Gerald Briscione met with the school superintendent and school board members and agreed to cut $22,000 from the school district spending plan.

If approved, the spending plan would call for a 2.53 cent per $100 of assessed valuation property tax increase, rather than the 2.7 cents proposed in the original budget, according to Kahle.

"We all looked at the budget closely, and I am comfortable with what we did," Briscione said at the workshop meeting.

The council will recommend in the resolution that the school board look at three areas: teacher contracts, workers' compensation and the IDEA grant, which is a grant the school district receives each year for special needs children in the district.

"The school board does not have to take the advice," Kahle said in an interview after the meeting. "They can make the cuts wherever they want. We just agree on the amount needed to be cut from the budget and recommend the areas where we feel the cuts should be made"

Kahle explained that the council agreed on the three areas because, "We did not want to make cuts that affect teachers, students or the education process. We looked for areas that would not compromise that."

Kahle said the council believes there will be extra money in the teacher salary line item of the budget because several teachers are leaving the district and the school district is currently re-negotiating teacher contracts.

As for workers' comp, Kahle said the school board anticipated more money than they spent in the last school budget. The district also spent less of the IDEA grant funding, she said, than anticipated over the past years.

The resolution was expected to appear on the May 18 council agenda, but a special council meeting will be scheduled to adopt the resolution in order to meet the May 15 deadline, Kahle said.

As of Tuesday a date had not been scheduled.

Once the resolution is adopted, if the school board believes the changes the council has made would too severely affect district operations, it may appeal the council's decision to the state commissioner of education, who would have the last word on any revisions.