Evesham school district budget cuts, including reduced busing, seen as way through 'a horrendous situation.'

An expected revenue shortfall in the coming school year in the Evesham Township School District may force deep cuts that target busing, extracurricular activities, class sizes and teacher workloads.

Facing about a $7 million gap between revenue and appropriations in its 2025-26 preliminary budget, the district may need to increase some elementary and middle school class sizes, end all elementary school extracurricular activities, require more students to walk to school and end late buses, said Superintendent Justin Smith. 

Removing the middle school student enrichment program known as Team Time, adding a sixth class to workloads of middle school teachers, consolidating some bus stops, outsourcing most of the transportation department, phasing out health benefits for all but a few paraprofessionals and spending the remainder of the School Health Insurance Fund may also be necessary to balance the 2025-26 budget, Smith said at a board meeting on January 30.

Despite the litany of potential cutting, Smith said those two rounds of cuts would yield only about $4.3 million.

"We are charting the least horrible path through a horrendous situation," Smith said. "The best way to walk that path is trying to walk together with understanding and with a recognition of the difficult balancing of needs that goes on across the district, leading to very difficult decisions."

The district may also have to make other cuts, including a music teacher, a librarian, a counselor, an arts teacher, a building technology position, two Spanish teachers, three reading recovery/intervention teachers and four teaching assistants, Smith explained.

These additional cuts total about $1.1 million, still leaving about $1.6 million of the original $7 million gap between revenues and expenses, according to Smith.

The $7 million gap stems from budget pressures such as finding funds to cover health benefit premium and salary increases, rising utility costs and repairing or replacing aging infrastructure, Jonathan Yates, the district business administrator/board secretary, said during the meeting. The total cost of these items is usually more than what is brought in with the maximum 2% tax levy increase cap, Yates said.

Yates added: "We have been told by the county and the state to expect our state aid to be flat or less. We do not know (yet) what that number is going to be. But if it is flat, we will assume an additional $7,149,000 loss. So, our total cumulative state funding loss that we have assumed as a district (since 2017) is just under $39 million."

"The state says…Evesham residents can afford to pay more and the state's going to pay less," Yates said.

"(However), we have not seen a decline in enrollment, but we have seen an over 51% reduction in our state funding."

The district will attempt to lease out middle school space, buses and the transportation yard to raise some revenue, according to Smith.

New Jersey school districts typically learn in late February or early March how much state aid they will receive. The Burlington County Superintendent's office must receive tentative school district budgets by March 19, according to Smith.

Also at the school board meeting, Board members David Bock, Jarod Brown, Terri Butrymowicz, Aiden DeMarsey, Tracy Fox, Aneesh Kanthan, Janis Knoll and William Thompson voted to accept a $132,080 quote from Northeast Plumbing Services to renovate Teddy Bear Academy’s toilet rooms so that they can be part of the district’s preschool expansion slated to begin this September.

Board Member Kevin Peelman did not vote in favor of accepting the quote. 

The district, citing Teddy Bear Academy’s inability to turn a profit, closed the academy at the end of the 2023-24 school year.

Since then, the district has received a $3.2 grant from the New Jersey Department of Education that will allow the district to move toward its goal of full-day preschool by the 2028-29 school year.