School District In Line For More Than $15 Million In State School Aid For 2016-17 School Year

The township school district will receive more than $15 million in total school aid from the state for the 2016-17 school year.

The township school district in 2016-17 will receive the highest amount of Pre-K state aid and the second-highest increase in its K-12 state aid in Somerset County, according to figures recently released by the state Department of Education.

The district will receive $13,283,157 in K-12 aid, a $129,569 increase from the 2015-16 school year’s total of $13,153,588, according to the state figures released on Feb. 19. The dollar amount of that increase is second only to North Plainfield’s $210,715 increase from the 2015-16 school year, according to the state figures.

The district’s Pre-K aid more than doubled from the 2015-16 allocation, growing from $857,123 to $1,720,995, according to the state figures.

Board of Education president Ed Potosnak said the aid is “good news for taxpayers.”

“After many years of flat funding, it’s nice to see state aid increase,” he said.

The district’s general K-12 aid is comprised of:

• $5,500,347 in equalization aid
• $917,058 in transportation aid
• $5,044,696 in special education aid
• $1,581,446 in security aid
• $80,870 in PARCC readiness aid
• $80,870 in per pupil growth aid
• $77,870 in Professional Learning Community Aid.

The latter is a new category that provides $10 per pupil “to support the development of ‘learning communities’ within and across districts, in order to help teachers and administrators analyze and use the assessment data they collect to improve classroom instruction,” according to the press release.

In total, Gov. Chris Christie’s proposed budget would allocate $13.3 billion to state public schools, an increase of about $548 million, according to the press release.

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