By Donald Wittkowski
Sea Isle City’s student population continues to shrink, offering more evidence that younger families simply can’t afford to buy homes in the beach town’s upscale housing market, a top school official said Tuesday.
Dan Tumolo, president of the Board of Education, said the number of students has plummeted in the past 30 years. He believes the downward trend will likely continue in the foreseeable future because the resort community remains popular with retirees who don’t have young children.
Sea Isle closed its public school in 2012 due to its declining student enrollment. Currently, there are only 130 local children in grades kindergarten through 12th, compared to about 250 in the 1980s, Tumolo said. Last year, there were 135 local students.
Tumolo detailed Sea Isle’s declining student population during a presentation on the new school budget to City Council on Tuesday. With no school of its own, Sea Isle sends most of its students to the Ocean City school district, while the remainder attend Catholic or private schools in the surrounding area.
Pointing to the most recent batch of census statistics, Tumolo said the average age for Sea Isle residents is 56 years old. In the previous census, the average was 52, so the city’s population continues to get grayer, he noted.
Sea Isle’s pricey housing market is also to blame for the declining student population, according to Tumolo. Young families with school-aged children are moving to Cape May County’s less-expensive mainland communities because they can’t afford to buy homes in Sea Isle, where the average assessed value for a house is $663,000, he said.
“That’s keeping the younger people out. They can’t afford these rates,” Tumolo said in an interview. “The population is aging, because the retirees are more well off and can afford to pay these rates.”
As Sea Isle’s student population has declined, so has its school budget. The new budget for the 2017-2018 school year totals $2.1 million, down about 17 percent from last year’s nearly $2.6 million spending plan.
With fewer students to send to outside school districts, Sea Isle’s tuition costs have gone down. For the 2017-2018 school year, the city will pay nearly $1.4 million for tuition, compared to close to $1.8 million in the previous year, the budget figures show.
The new budget keeps school taxes the same for the sixth straight year, Tumolo said. The owner of a typical home assessed at $663,000 will pay $285 annually in local school taxes.
Despite the declining student population, Tumolo said the city remains committed to providing “the best education and career opportunities for all of the children of Sea Isle City.”
Budget spending includes funds for a mental health program at Ocean City High School following two student suicides in the past two years. Other funding initiatives include a drug awareness program and a “creative innovation project” that will allow students to get involved in the community. The budget also includes funding to reimburse students for the cost of taking the SAT college-entrance test.
