July 5th Negotiations Committee Response on Budget, CEA Contract
Letter to the Editor published in The Retrospect, July 5, 2024, Edition
To the Editor:
As the Collingswood Board of Education’s Negotiations Committee, we are writing to the Collingswood community to address the current school budget landscape and the ongoing negotiations between the Collingswood Education Association (CEA) and the Collingswood Board of Education (Board). In this letter, we wish both to lay out some basic facts about these topics and, with those facts, motivate our community to work together toward actual solutions that allow our district and its hardworking staff to continue to serve all of our community’s children.
We want to start by describing the difficult economic reality our district and many other districts in New Jersey currently face. Collingswood faces a structural budget deficit. Simply, our district cannot raise enough revenue to meet continually increasing expenses. Per NJ statute, school districts are limited in their ability to raise local taxes over 2% (often referred to as the “2% cap”).
This 2% cap prevents districts like Collingswood from bringing in enough revenue to meet the increasing costs needed to successfully operate their schools. Combined with the lack of adequate state funding, these factors have created a scenario outside of local control, which has forced school districts like ours to make difficult decisions around staffing and programming.
Within this difficult economic reality, the Board has worked diligently to ensure that the school district can best meet the needs of our community’s children. We know that the district’s teachers, administrators, and support staff have also worked tirelessly in service of our students and their families every single day. As Collingswood residents, community members, and parents, we have seen this firsthand and are deeply grateful for how the district’s staff care about our children and work to inspire and challenge them in and out of the classroom.
In May, our school district was forced to lay off some of these teachers and administrators, not because of fiscal mismanagement or misplaced priorities, but because of the structural budget deficit we face. In doing so, the district was required to adhere to both teacher and administrator tenure rules that dictate which staff must be laid off first. However, despite some very public claims to the contrary, the Board has not deprioritized the salary and benefits of its staff, nor has it allowed administrative costs to balloon.
In the 2018-19 school year, prior to the global pandemic, 78% of our district’s budget went towards salaries and benefits, and less than 9% went towards administrative costs. In the 2024-25 school year, 78% of our district’s budget will once again go towards salaries and benefits, and less than 9% will once again go towards administrative costs. The district’s budgetary challenges come from continually increasing costs in areas such as transportation and related services exacerbated by the global pandemic, not from misplaced priorities.
In fact, in the face of rising costs, the Board and district have taken specific and intentional action to mitigate the district’s budgetary challenges. For example, since 2021, the district has applied for and been awarded over $7 million in competitive grant funding. These grants have enabled the district to provide and maintain much-needed services, staff, and programming, such as the middle and high school Wellness Center and the engineering program. Given that the district’s ability to raise local tax revenue is limited by the 2% cap, grant funding has provided a way to temper the impact of the structural budget deficit.
Additionally, when the previous Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction retired in September 2023, the Board made the conscious decision to delay hiring a replacement for this much-needed position. Instead, it reallocated those funds to teacher salaries, which meant that no teachers were laid off for the 2023-24 school year. Then, upon hiring a replacement in May 2024, the Board ensured that her salary was funded completely through grants, which has allowed the district to continue to reallocate funds to pay for teachers while we seek long-term solutions to the structural budget deficit.
Some have cited our current Superintendent’s salary as a sign that the Board has misplaced priorities. When the Board hired Dr. McDowell in 2021, we did so at a salary which was $24,000 less than what the previous superintendent earned during the 2019-20 school year. Next year, Dr. McDowell’s salary will still be almost $10,000 less than what the previous superintendent earned during the 2019-20 school year.
Furthermore, attacks on our Superintendent and Business Administrator have at times cited incorrect salary figures and have often failed to acknowledge an important fact: that they serve two school districts, Collingswood Public Schools and Oaklyn Public Schools. This means that the cost of their contracts is also borne by Oaklyn Public Schools, with Collingswood paying 88% and Oaklyn paying 12%.
Attacks on our Assistant Business Administrator are similarly misguided. Our Assistant Business Administrator not only fills the role of the district senior accountant that he replaced but also performs additional important duties beyond those of an accountant. In addition, Oaklyn pays for 80% of the cost of his salary. Claims that his hire cost the district an additional $30,000 are false.
Overall, maintaining low administrative costs has been a priority for the Board and the district. To put our district’s administrative costs in perspective, our 2024-25 budgeted total administrative costs per pupil is the 6th lowest out of 36 operating public school districts in Camden County.
With all of this context in mind, we now turn to the district’s immediate challenge of coming to terms on a mutually acceptable contract with the CEA. Knowing that settling this contract is of utmost importance, we reached out last week to the CEA to schedule weekly meetings throughout July. As of earlier this week, the CEA and Board have agreed to meet on July 16th.
We look forward to this upcoming meeting because we believe that the Board and CEA can come to terms on a salary guide that boosts the salaries of early career teachers, administrative assistants, and instructional aides while continuing the district’s tradition of providing raises in line with county average for all of our staff. Such a solution would address concerns about the current salary guide through a fiscally prudent contract that allows for sufficient staff and programming for our schools given the current difficult economic realities this district faces.
Beyond settling the CEA contract, our Board will continue to seek out ways to address the district’s funding problem because our children, families, teachers, administrators, and staff deserve fully funded schools. Given that this problem is structural, the long-term solution must also be structural, which is why our Business Administrator and Superintendent have been advocating at the state level for a fair school funding formula. We also want to highlight the work of Kellie Hinkle, President of the Haddon Township Board of Education, who is leading a grassroots effort to advocate for fair school funding from the state.
Members of the Board have joined in these efforts, and we encourage members of our community to do the same. We also invite the CEA into this effort. Our community’s teachers are arguably best positioned to explain the impact of this structural deficit on their work and their students, and we would greatly value their partnership. Collaboration within a strong and resilient community like Collingswood will enable us to find real solutions to the district’s challenges and strengthen our district’s ability to meet the needs of our children now and into the future.
Collingswood Board of Education, Negotiations Committee
Regan Kaiden, Christine Sheridan Celia, Roger Chu, and Matt Craig