The Hazlet Board of Education approved the budget during a Monday night meeting after applying for NJ's tax levy incentive aid program.
Sara Winick, Patch Staff
|Updated Thu, May 1, 2025 at 4:19 pm ET
HAZLET, NJ — The Hazlet Township Board of Education adopted its budget for the 2025-26 school year during a public hearing on Monday night, including a 5.53% tax increase.
The budget approval comes after the board applied for new tax levy incentive aid from the state, which provides a one-time tax increase to support school districts throughout New Jersey deemed under-adequacy/below their local fair share.
The Hazlet School District applied for incentive aid after Superintendent Scott Ridley announced that an external vendor had made a miscalculation in their budget, which left the district with a $600,000 gap to fill.
According to Ridley, the district was only made aware of the miscalculation during the first weekend of April 2025, just a few weeks after the board approved their tentative budget and shortly before the district’s final budget was due.
After the district was made aware of this issue, the board met to discuss potential solutions and voted to apply for the incentive aid during a special meeting on April 14.
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Though the district qualified for $5 million, school officials only approved a $1.5 million increase, which aims to address students’ most crucial needs. For a house valued at $600,000, this would equate to $500 per year or $40 per month.
“Even though we definitely have challenges and needs…there should be some sort of way of a compromise, of meeting some of these challenges but not asking for the full $5 million,” Ridley said at Monday night’s meeting. “So with an eye toward the community, they [the Board of Education] approved a $1.5 million increase of the available $5 million.”
In the district’s 2025-26 budget presentation, school officials outlined some of the goals they hope to achieve with this additional funding, including:
“Last year we suffered,” Ridley said. “Last year, I heard from a lot of parents who diplomatically explained that class sizes were too big, there was too much going on, there wasn’t enough academic stuff for these kids to embrace.”
“Hence, we appealed to the board and, as I shared, they agreed to the $1.5 million, which will allow us to return all of this come September,” Ridley continued.
With the incentive aid, district officials said they’ll also be able to reinstate courtesy busing for the 2025-26 school year and hire additional teaching and support staff, according to their budget presentation.
This staff may include:
“There’s so many things that we can offer students that we couldn’t offer this year,” said Business Administrator and Board Secretary Tracy Petrino. “And having lost them this year, I think we all know what that means to bring them back. It does mean that the students will have a lot more resources for them to be successful.”
During Monday night’s meeting, Petrino also discussed projects the district has been able to complete through grants and other projects that are still in the works.
In the 2024-25 school year, Petrino said grant funding allowed the district to extend Raritan High School’s outdoor gym area, including a Bocci Court, an Outdoor Volleyball Court, and a seating area for students.
Looking ahead, district officials outlined other projects still in the works, including solar panels for Hazlet schools, roof replacements at Hazlet Middle School and Beers Street School, and a playground replacement at Cove Road Playground.
To read the agenda for Monday night’s meeting, you can click here. To access the district’s 2025-26 budget presentation, you can click here.
To watch a full recording of Monday night’s meeting, you can watch here.
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