By Donald Wittkowski
For the eighth straight year, Sea Isle City’s Board of Education has adopted a budget that keeps school taxes stable.
The 2019-2020 school spending plan totals $2.4 million, up slightly from last year’s budget, figures show.
There will be no increase in the amount of funding to be raised by taxation. For the owner of an average Sea Isle home assessed at around $646,000, the annual school tax will be $260.
Dan Tumolo, president of the Board of Education, said school finances remain strong. The budget supports a number of education and community initiatives, including mental health counseling, drug prevention, a creativity innovation project and an SAT testing reimbursement program for Sea Isle students.
The Board of Education also has partnerships with the city and the Sea Isle Chamber of Commerce and Revitalization for initiatives that benefit local schoolchildren.
The school budget also includes a fund balance that maintains “a healthy level” for emergency spending if needed, documents show.
Sea Isle, which closed its own public school in 2012 due to declining enrollment, sends most of its students to the Ocean City school district for their education. Sea Isle pays Ocean City tuition for educating its students.
Tuition costs remain the biggest expense in the 2019-2020 school budget, coming in at nearly $1.7 million.
Transportation costs are the second-largest expense at $470,000. Administration, operations and maintenance costs totaling about $140,000 make up the rest of the budget expenses.
As Sea Isle’s student population has declined, so has its school budget, which hit a high of about $4.4 million while the public school was still open, Tumolo said.
Budget spending fell when Sea Isle began sending its students in grades fifth through eighth to Ocean City in 2010, followed by third and fourth grades in 2011 and first and second grades in 2012. Then the school was closed because there were not enough students to continue operating it.
Sea Isle officials are currently discussing plans to redevelop the old school at 4501 Park Road into a community recreation center. Options that are being explored include renovating the school at an estimated cost of $2 million or demolishing the building to make room for construction of an entirely new recreation center.
The cost of a new recreation complex could range from an estimated $13 million to $20 million, depending on whether an indoor pool is included in the project.
City officials are still gathering public input on the project before any decisions are made on the cost and designs. No timetable has been given for building the recreation center if the city chooses to move ahead with it.
During a recent City Council meeting, supporters of the recreation center said an indoor community pool would help Sea Isle to attract more families to town.
Tumolo explained that Sea Isle’s upscale real estate market, which is popular for summer vacation homes, is simply too expensive for most young families to afford. As a result, families with school-age children are seeking less-expensive housing in the mainland communities surrounding Sea Isle.
“People can’t afford to come in and pay $800,000 for a house, so consequently they live off-shore,” Tumolo said.
Sea Isle’s student population generally has been declining year after year since the school was closed, but the most recent figures show a slight increase. For the 2019-2020 school year, the city has a total of 114 students, compared to 109 last year. Tumolo called the modest increase a “fluke” that does not suggest any long-term trends.
He noted, for instance that the current figure of 114 students is only one-fourth of the 444 school-age children who lived in Sea Isle in 2000.
For the 2019-2020 school year, 83 of Sea Isle’s students will be sent to Ocean City’s public schools. A smaller number of Sea Isle students will attend the Bishop McHugh, Wildwood Catholic, Holy Spirit and St. Augustine Prep schools in Atlantic and Cape May counties.
The city’s aging population is another factor in the downward trend of schoolchildren, Tumolo said. U.S. Census figures show that the median age of Sea Isle’s residents was 63 years old in 2016, compared to 51 in 2010.
