By NANETTE LoBIONDO GALLOWAY
MARGATE Faced with difficult decisions in right-sizing its budget amid declining enrollment, the Margate school district will boost enrollment by accepting tuition students for the 2019-2020 school year.
According to Superintendent Thomas Baruffi, the district will accept students in grades kindergarten through fourth grade. The district will charge $5,000 per non-resident student, he said.
It's open to anyone who wants to send their children here, Baruffi said. (The tuition) has to be competitive; $5,000 is not a lot, but if we get 20 students, that's $100,000 to help with the budget.
Accepting tuition students will not solve all the district's budgetary problems, but the board is making a concerted effort to maintain the programs offered to students, he said.
Baruffi, who is serving in an interim capacity for a two-year period before the board appoints its next superintendent, said he's been with the district long enough to understand what the board it trying to do maintain a high-quality education offered to Margate students without raising taxes.
The board has come under fire from some residents who say the cost of educating students in Margate is too high and declining enrollment warrants the district consider consolidating to just one school.
Consolidation is in the game plan and when I'm done next year, any consolidation efforts will be undertaken by the new administration, he said.
Accepting tuition students will help stabilize the budget and allow the district to maintain class size at about 18 students per classroom in the primary grades.
Although second grade currently has 15 students in two sections, there's not a whole lot of wiggle room in kindergarten, he said.
So far, about 32 children are already registered for kindergarten in September, which will fill two classrooms, with more expected to enroll closer to the opening of the school year. Nevertheless, the board will not consider hiring a teacher to cover a third section of kindergarten, he said.
The district is looking to fill the gaps where enrollment is lower in several grade levels.
There are only 10 children in two sections currently enrolled in this year's kindergarten class, so the district will have the most room available in first grade, he said.
We will have to see our numbers for the other grades, he said.
Baruffi said the district currently has policies in place to accept tuition students, but those policies will have to be updated at the next board meeting to limit acceptance to the elementary grades.
There will be an application process with certain criteria. We'll look at their attendance, discipline and academic performance, he said. Any classifications will have to be reviewed by the Child Study Team to determine if we have programs that can meet the student's needs.
Transportation will not be provided, he said.
The district is currently formulating an online application process through the district's website, www.margateschools.org, to make it easier for the parents to apply, and will start an advertising campaign to attract students, he said.
The district is also considering a pre-school inclusion program for resident children, but no firm details are available at this time, he said.
The idea is to bring in a limited number of regular education pre-schoolers, he said. However, the state is not offering any funding for that at this time.
The district currently offers a pre-kindergarten program for special education students only.
Carl Tripician, president of the Longport Board of Education, which sends about 50 students to the district on a sending-receiving basis, said he supports both options.
We requested they consider it, he said. The benefits to Longport would be great.
Tripician said because the district pays tuition based on the Margate school district's total enrollment, the more students the district educates, the lower the tuition amount Longport would pay.
We've had increases in tuition over the years because of the decline in enrollment, he said. Filliing empty seats won't increase Margate's operating budget and it would benefit our students to have a more diverse student body.
Having a pre-k inclusion program would get students acclimated to the school and identifying any learning disabilities early on would reduce costs for taxpayers in the long run, he said.
Margate's 2019-2020 budget approved in March totaled $12,763,571 and maintained all educational programming despite a reduction in staff. Personnel cuts included eliminating three full-time positions and reducing three full-time positions to part-time.
The school tax levy was down $13,000, and cost per pupil dropped $756 to $30,327.
The school district currently has 354 students, down from 562 students 10 years ago.
Baruffi projects that if that trend continues, in four years the district will have fewer than 300 students the magic number that could spur consolidation to one school.
At the Board of School Estimate meeting in March, Baruffi said the board has been discussing school consolidation and has met with an architect about conducting a long-range facilities plan.
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