The budget passed, with three Board members, Frank Capone, Jacqueline Tobacco and Gary Tulp, voting against the tax increase.
Carly Baldwin, Patch Staff
|Updated Thu, May 1, 2025 at 10:13 am ET
MIDDLETOWN, NJ — At the Wednesday night Middletown school board meeting, as the board battled over next year's budget, Board president Frank Capone proposed a motion that the Board approve an earlier plan, which was to sell a lot of land to the Township and raise the school tax levy 5.5 percent.
However, superintendent Jessica Alfone said both of those proposals had to be brought up in separate votes before tonight's meeting.
Capone also scrambled to propose lower tax levy increases, prompting Board member Joan Minniues to say "you're playing 'Let's Make a Deal' with our kids."
So, the Board took a vote to pass the district's proposed budget, which comes with a 10.1 percent tax increase. The budget passed, with three Board members — Capone, Jacqueline Tobacco and Gary Tulp — voting against the tax increase. Here is the vote on the budget:
Tulp said he was against the 10.1 percent tax increase because it was "the most drastic possible option."
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But other board members said the infusion of tax revenue would help the district, and improve students' education.
"I cannot consciously not vote for this," said Minnuies, saying the public could even vote her off the board for her vote. She said the 10-percent tax increase will help make the district more financially stable.
"Without getting that extra money in, we don't have financial health," said Fitzgerald. "I'm sorry, but 10.1 is the only option at this point."
"This is a no brainer," said Mark Soporowski. "We cannot come up here next year and the year after that talking about how many millions of dollars we are in debt."
Multiple Middletown residents encouraged the Board to pass the budget with the 10.1 tax increase.
"It's a tax increase to make one small step in a very dysfunctional budget," said one woman.
"The benefit of this difficult choice sets us on a multi-year path to financial health," said another Middletown resident.
But another woman asked the district not to raise the school taxes 10.1 percent.
"It's inevitable the schools are going to close, so increasing the taxes is not the best idea," she said.
School district administrator Amy Doherty started off the meeting by presenting the 2025-'26 school year budget. Because the Middletown school district was approved by the state for something called a tax levy incentive program, the district is allowed to raise the school tax levy beyond the 2 percent cap that it has increased annually since 2011.
The district was able to trim $6 million in operating costs from its budget, said Alfone, which she said she was proud of and wanted to highlight to the public. This savings came from cuts to administrative positions. Also, $2.4 million alone came from support staff cuts, which Alfone stressed is not actually cutting support staff teachers, but actually just changes and reductions in scheduling. The district has also tabled many of its planned infrastructure projects, she said.
Closing schools and redistricting is next on the school district's agenda.
The Middletown school district already hired an outside strategic planning firm. The district will pay that consulting firm $24,000 to tell the district how to solve its budget holes going forward, said Alfone.
The consulting firm will first assess all the buildings in the district; that facilities assessment will take place during the month of June. They will then present a report in mid- to late September about "how our boundaries could be redesigned" and any Middletown school buildings "that are aging and could be taken offline," said Alfone.
"I think we all know that something needs to change," said the superintendent.
There will also be three public meetings, with the first in May, where the strategic planning firm will hear from the Middletown community. The dates of those meetings was published at the hearing, but it was difficult to see. A flyer with the dates will be sent out Friday to school parents, said Alfone.
"If the strategic planning firm comes back to us in September and recommends closing schools, what are we going to do then?" said Capone. He already said closing schools is imminent in Middletown.
"They are likely going to recommend closing at least two schools, possibly more," said Tulp.
Some members of the public criticized the Board for keeping from them that the district needs to close schools. Two women called for the resignation of Capone and Tobacco, saying they "hid" the financial problems of the school district from the public for the past four years.
You can watch Wednesday night's meeting, which is still ongoing, here:
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