The Board of Education will revise the school budget in the coming weeks to reflect the increase in state aid last week.
Matawan Aberdeen Regional School District will receive an additional $584,217 for the 2011-12 school year. With the additional appropriation from the state, the increase from the 2010-11 school year has doubled.
In total, the district will now receive $11,235,493 in state aid over the 2011-12 school year.
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The increase in aid came with guidelines for usage. School districts have the option to use the money for tax relief or to revise the budget. A certain percentage of the money can also be carried into the 2012-13 and 2013-14 academic years.
MARSD chose to revise the budget, as there was not enough time to use the aid for tax relief, according to Superintendent David Healy.
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According to the guidelines issued by the state, the district had to advertise 48 hours in advance to holding a public meeting of the board of education to be in compliance with the Open Public Meetings Act. At this meeting, the board would have to pass a resolution to state the amount of aid used for tax relief, revise the revenues in the budget and certify the revised documents.
The deadline to revise property taxes was July 19 at 4 p.m, one week from the announcement of the additional aid.
Healy believes that taking the time to carefully revise the budget is smarter than rushing against an almost impossible timeline to revise taxes.
"Revising this budget is going to be a well thought out process," Healy said. "We are going to be meeting with everyone to really access where the needs are."
According to Healy, he hopes to use the aid to increase technology and support curriculum initiatives like literacy.
"The schools took a big hit last year with all the cuts. I imagine a lot of districts will use the funds to supplement those cuts," Healy said.
The board will discuss the use of state aid at their next meeting, which will be held July 25 at 7 p.m. at the board of education building.
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