District overview
Roxbury Township School District
A district that says the state funding formula has cost it over $7 million, and has just cut twenty-one posts to balance the books.
Why is Roxbury cutting posts while raising taxes?
Roxbury Township School District teaches about 3,400 children in seven schools, from four elementary schools through Lincoln/Roosevelt for the middle years, Eisenhower Middle School and Roxbury High School. Ten people sit on the board: nine elected by Roxbury Township voters to staggered three-year terms, plus one representative of Mount Arlington, which sends its pupils to Roxbury and pays tuition for them. Almost all the money is local - the 2026-27 plan raises $70.3 million from Roxbury taxpayers against $8.5 million from state sources - and the district's own audited accounts say why that gap has widened: a change to the state's funding formula has cost it more than $7 million since 2019, because the formula's three drivers, enrolment, household income and property values, have all moved against it. That is the reason the same meeting that adopted the 2026-27 budget also abolished twenty-one positions.
Local property tax is almost the whole budget
$70,341,678 of local levy against $8,499,506 from state sources in a $89,947,457 general-fund budget for 2026-27.
The levy rose about 8.1% in one year
$70,341,678 proposed for 2026-27 against $65,092,464 the previous year, after the 2025-26 filing had flagged $600,000 of extraordinary aid annotated 'need additional revenue to balance budget'.
Twenty-one posts were abolished to close the gap
Effective June 30, 2026: the assistant business administrator and board secretary, two curriculum supervisors, and fifteen teaching and support positions.
The repair reserve is nearly gone and the buildings are old
The maintenance reserve falls from $2,520,037 in June 2024 to a projected $159,508 by June 2027, across seven schools whose oldest building opened in 1918 and newest in 1971.
The books themselves are clean. The auditor gave an unmodified opinion on 2024-25 with no material weaknesses, no significant deficiencies, no findings and no questioned costs, and recorded the district as a low-risk auditee. The district also carries almost no debt - $4,495,000 of energy-savings refunding bonds - and a demographic study it commissioned projects enrolment rising by between 158 and 179 pupils over the next five years after a decade of decline.
Roxbury's finances and the 2026-27 reductions
Total appropriations across all funds are $91,162,627.
Up from $65,092,464, about 8.1%; two years earlier it was $62,366,624.
About a twelfth of the local levy. The audited report says the formula change has cost the district over $7 million since 2019.
The assistant business administrator and board secretary, two curriculum supervisors, and fifteen teaching and support posts.
New Jersey's standard comparative measure, up from $22,934 revised for 2025-26. Compare only with other New Jersey districts' figures in the same format.
Up from 3,327 actual in October 2025. The district's demographic study projects a further 158 to 179 pupils over five years.
Down from $2,520,037 audited at June 2024, after a $1,200,000 withdrawal in the revised 2025-26 budget.
Counted from the running incident numbers the board affirms at each meeting, reaching incidents forty to forty-five by August 2026.
Major projects
Balancing the 2026-27 budget
Reductions in effect from July 2026The board gave tentative approval to a $70.3 million levy in March 2026, adopted the final budget at the April 27 meeting, and in the same block of resolutions abolished twenty-one positions effective June 30, citing reductions in state aid, falling enrolment and rising operational costs. At the same meeting it ratified five-year contracts with the teachers' association and the bus drivers running to 2031. The maintenance reserve had already been drawn down by $1.2 million in the revised 2025-26 budget and is projected to end at about $160,000.
- Board gives tentative approval to a $70,341,678 levy and sets the public hearing
- Final budget adopted; twenty-one positions abolished; five-year union contracts ratified
- Board fixes 2026-27 salaries for every principal, assistant principal and supervisor
- The abolished positions end
Funding
Local property-tax levy of $70,341,678, $8,499,506 from state sources, and $4,643,113 of prior-year fund balance
The published record does not put a saving figure on the twenty-one abolished positions.
Bringing special-education pupils back into district schools
Under way, with two settlements along the wayThe district's audited accounts describe expanding special-education provision in its own schools specifically so that pupils currently placed outside the district can return, saving both tuition and transport. Over the same period the board approved two settlement agreements in special-education due-process proceedings before the state Office of Administrative Law, in November and December 2025, with no terms published. The district also bills other districts tuition for spare places in its own programmes.
- Board approves a global settlement in two consolidated special-education cases
- Board approves a second special-education settlement
- Audited accounts describe expanding in-house provision to bring pupils back
Funding
Operating budget, offset by tuition saved on out-of-district placements and tuition billed to other districts for spare places
No figure for the saving appears in the published record, and neither settlement's terms are disclosed.
Recent news
This overview is built from the district's own approved minutes and agendas for every board meeting it published between October 2025 and September 2026, its Policy 5516 on electronic communication devices and Policy 5701 on academic integrity, its audited financial report for the year ended June 30, 2025, and its state-format user-friendly budgets for 2025-26 and 2026-27.
Get alerts for Roxbury Township School District
We read every agenda, packet, and set of minutes, and write up the decisions that affect families — each one linked to the document it came from.
View alerts for this district