BY WALTER ELLIOTT
EAST ORANGE – Many of those in the East Orange School District community are hoping that the new year will turn the page on a difficult budgetary and personnel climate that had developed in the first half of the 2024-25 school year.
EOSD’s workforce has been instructing and operating with 71 less people than when it had started with on Sept. 1. The overall 93 employees who were laid off or transferred Dec. 15 to cut a $25 million budget deficit to $8 million.
Many of those employees are East Orange Education Association members who have been working without a new contract for two years. The teachers union and the district administration had been at an impasse since the rank-and-file members voted down the contract around Thanksgiving Day.
Remaining employees are being paid from their contract that had expired on June 30, 2022.
District administrators are meanwhile looking to find the $8 million to balance the 2024-25 budget. It is not known as of press time whether it will seek a loan from the New Jersey Department of Education.
The East Orange Board of Education Negotiations Committee and EOEA leadership had reached a tentative collective bargaining agreement on Nov. 15.
That CBA called for a 10.5 percent salary increase in steps over five years. It would have started out with a two percent increase on Dec. 31 had it been ratified and a 2.25-percent hike in 2025-26.
The proposed act included the EOSD offering “an enhanced dental plan” and kicking in 25 percent of the improved benefit. The district was to have boosted the hourly pay rate for extracurricular activities preschool, afterschool and on weekends or holidays.
The proposed CBA was approved by the EOSD Nov. 15 and was put to the union membership – and was later voted down. The labor contract agreements and denial were made while the 71 people were in the midst of being laid off.
EOBOE voted to send 60-day layoff notices to 93 people at its Oct. 16 meeting. That vote was to reduce a $25 million 2024-25 budget deficit that was discovered in September.
EOSD Superintendent of Schools Dr. Christopher Irving came aboard July 1 after the previous school board had approved the 2024-25 budget in May. The sending plan passed NJDOE and Essex County Superintendent of Schools’ muster before June 30.
Dr. Irving, in a rare Oct. 22 interview, said that he noticed around Labor Day that the new school year’s payroll was off. He said that the budget would be short in June 2025 “if all expenses remained where they were.”
The workforce reduction was approved by the board Oct. 15 and took effect Dec. 15. The first 71 teachers, aides and related employees were to be let go. Another 18 were reassigned to positions at lower pay. Part of the cuts were in Dr. Irving’s anticipation of 20 percent increases in food service, transportation and out-of-district student placements in January.
A volume of EOSD members called out sick Oct. 17-18 was large enough for EOSD to hold only half-days.
Some of the laid off EOSD employees may be working in other districts as of Jan. 1.
It is not clear as of press time whether the district had approached NJDOE about a loan along the lines that the state agency gave to Nutley last spring and Belleville in 2014.
The Nutley BOE discovered a $7 million deficit last February and adopted an NJDOE loan in May. Belleville’s school board trustees discovered a $3.7 million deficit in 2014 and appealed to the state that year. Nutley and Belleville received their budget plugs from Trenton – but on conditions.
NJDOE said that affected school districts have to repay the loans over 30 years; Belleville and Nutley did so through municipal bond issues. Their budgets will be subjected to state auditor scrutiny.
