By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
The Board of Education president who has overseen more than a decade of stable school taxes in Sea Isle City will continue in his leadership post for the 12th straight year.
Dan Tumolo was appointed president for 2023 during the school board’s annual reorganization meeting Tuesday. Kristy Pittaluga was appointed vice president of the five-member board.
Tumolo, 83, said he has served as president in all 12 years he has been on the board. For 11 years in a row, the board has not increased Sea Isle’s school taxes, a streak that Tumolo called a “major accomplishment.”
“We’ve kept the taxes down. There has been no increase in my time there,” he said in an interview Wednesday.
Based on the budgets of the last two years, Sea Isle homeowners pay about $278 annually in school taxes on a house assessed at around $700,000.
Sea Isle closed its public school in 2012 due to declining student enrollment. However, it maintains an annual school budget of about $2.6 million to pay for the cost of sending Sea Isle’s students to other districts, primarily Ocean City.
About $2 million in the budget goes toward school tuition and transportation costs. A small amount of the funding goes toward insurance and administrative expenses.
Tumolo said 93 of Sea Isle’s students attend public schools in Ocean City, six go to Bishop McHugh Regional Catholic School in Cape May Court House and two are enrolled at Wildwood Catholic Academy in North Wildwood, formerly known as Wildwood Catholic High School.
What is shaping up to be Sea Isle’s biggest challenge now is finding enough school bus drivers to transport the local students to Ocean City, Tumolo noted.
“There is a shortage of drivers for the buses,” he said. “It’s been a major headache for the buses.”
Other towns in New Jersey have also been scrambling to find enough school bus drivers amid a nationwide employee shortage in the industry blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s been very difficult getting a good bus organization up and running,” Tumolo said.
Although tuition and transportation costs make up the bulk of the school budget, there have been other major expenses over the years.
Sea Isle’s school budget has supported a number of education and community initiatives in the Ocean City school district, including mental health counseling, drug prevention, a creativity innovation project and an SAT testing reimbursement program for students.
The Board of Education also has partnerships with the city and the Sea Isle City Chamber of Commerce and Revitalization for initiatives that benefit local schoolchildren.
Budget spending started to drop overall 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 in 2012 because there were not enough students to continue operating it.
Now, the city plans to demolish the old school at 4501 Park Road to make room for a proposed $20 million community recreation center. Demolition is expected to happen in January or February. Barring major delays with construction, the community center is tentatively scheduled to open in early 2025, according to city officials.
