District Business Admin on State Aid: 'Montville Made Out Well'

The Montville Township school district got some good news on Wednesday when the state Department of Education announced that the district would receive nearly $670,000 in state aid for the 2011-2012 school year.

That influx of money is especially good news for business administrator Jim Tevis, who said that he felt the county districts, especially Montville “made out pretty well.”

“I can unequivocally say we’re happy about it,” he said. “I think we made out pretty well. We’re really happy about it.”

The $669,983 is significantly more than the roughly $31,000 the district received from the state for the 2010-2011 school year, which saw the district lose nearly $3.2 million in state money.

Tevis said that the news of more state money was good, but not completely unexpected.

“It wasn’t a surprise exactly,” he said “We had heard rumors about 48 hours before the announcement. We knew we were going to get about $600,000, which is about one percent of the budget.”

Tevis said that, of the nearly $670,000 the district will receive in general aid, roughly $22,000 of that money will go toward debt service, give the Board of Education about $647,365 to work with. He said that it is too soon to know how the money will be used, but that he was working with superintendent Dr. Paul Fried to determine how best to use the state aid.

“It’s being worked on as we speak,” he said. “We haven’t had the chance to fully evaluate it yet. We’ve got a board meeting next Tuesday where will hope to adopt the prelimnary budget, but its still too early to speculate.”

Board of Education president Dr. Karen Cortellino said that the board would discuss the state aid at the March 1 meeting.

The superintendent is currently presenting a proposed budget to the Board of Education and the township residents. As presented, the budget would create freshman girls soccer and volleyball teams, as well as establishing a financial literacy course in the high school, and a Spanish / Italian language teacher to the middle school.

The current budget would also cut the Supervisor of Humanities position from the district, as well as one teacher from William Mason elementary. The 2011-2012 budget proposal comes in under the state 2 percent cap.

The Board of Education's next meeting is on Match 1 at the Board of Education building.