Issue 3 of 8
The Financial Deficit
This is the single biggest issue facing the West Orange Board of Education. Without change, the same services will cost $10 Million more each year than we can fund.
The West Orange School District, like most districts in the state of New Jersey, currently faces a structural deficit every year. Our schools face sharply rising costs – including health care, energy, property insurance, and maintenance on our buildings – but very limited ability to increase revenue. Without change, providing the same services to our students each year will cost $10 Million more than we can fund.
In 2024-25 and 2025-26 the district eliminated 136 full time educational staff and outsourced nearly all of our 232 paraprofessionals. Building maintenance has been put off into the future, and treasured programs like middle school sports, the Fall HS musical, and AVID have been eliminated. Without new solutions, these cuts will continue into the foreseeable future and the impact on our children will be devastating. We cannot continue to accept this course of events.
This is the single biggest issue facing the West Orange Board of Education for the next few years. We must have someone who understands this funding crisis in detail on the Board of Education. Larry is one of only a handful of people in the state who understand this issue at the level of detail necessary to help our town navigate through the current storm.
The money we need to maintain our services is not hidden under a mattress, nor can it be found by uncovering vast quantities of waste or needless programs. West Orange’s students deserve reasonable class sizes, individual attention, special education supports, a variety of extra-curricular activities, and the inspiration of our valued educational professionals.
For the past two years Larry has joined with others in West Orange to demand a long term strategic plan to maintain educational excellence in the face of these challenges. Hard choices will need to be made, and we must involve the community, the students, the parents, and the educators together in an open effort to make sure our values are reflected in the choices we make for our children. The impact of those choices will be felt for a long time to come.