officials in Middletown have a new proposal to balance the school district's budget save schools from closing and teachers from being laid off The township will buy 10 acres of property owned by the district using tax money from the open space trust fund and absorb some of the costs for school police officers That in combination with administrative cuts and increased taxes should be enough they say to close Middletown's $10 million budget gap But they're not the only districts facing money troubles As senior correspondent Joanna Gagas reports several other schools are also eyeing mass layoffs as they teeter on a fiscal cliff If you're a superintendent this time of year you're working the numbers from every angle trying to come up with a balanced budget But for many districts around the state the numbers simply don't add up After using our 2% cap increase that were mandated to by the uh Department of Education we're going to be $22.3 million short Tom's River finally saw an increase in state aid this year after being on the losing end for the last seven years Even still they're facing doubledigit deficits in the millions again Planefield has seen consecutive increases but Superintendent Rashan Hassan says it's still not enough While our school district did see an increase uh in state aid of roughly 11.8 million our salaries and benefits have increased by a little more than $12 million going into the 2526 school year So that's really eaten into the increase that we received in state aid Both superintendents say they couldn't be any more lean with their budgets having already made painful cuts Both are considering options that could impact taxpayers A state loan to fill in the the the difference the returning of the aid that seems to overshot Tom's River based on the formula and or allow us to exceed the 2% cap and raise taxes by 16% And that's coming off the heels of of a year where we've already were mandated by the state to raise our taxes 10% or $13 million Planefield is also asking residents for a tax increase for the first time in six years to avoid staff layoffs That proposal is to impose the 2% tax levy increase which would net us a little over half a million dollars in increased revenue but it's to also utilize a portion of what's considered bank cap uh to the tune of roughly $9 million For every year that a school district does not impose the tax levy what could have been collected in taxes is put away in what's considered a bank fund And the school district has the ability to go back and recoup or reclaim those funds for up to three years To be clear those funds were never collected And if the plan is approved taxpayers will see a 36% increase or about $850 a year Some blame it on the caps put in place this year 3% on any cuts a district could face and 6% caps on any increases Senator Declan Ocan is introducing a bill to end the caps on increases and referring to Governor Murphy says he said we have to slavishly abide by the school funding formula exactly as it's written and S2 another slight modification of it Uh we argued no you don't We should be reworking this Uh he said no Well now that some of those districts have had the full brunt of the cuts of the fees invest two over the last seven years uh and they're due to get increases now he wants to cap their increases Absolutely horrific Senate Education Committee Chair Vin Gopal told us he too would be in favor of removing the cap but needs to see how they pay for it which is hard to know with looming federal cuts Earlier this week the Trump administration announced real cuts 85 million in COVID dollars cut from a total of 20 school districts leaving Kingsburg in Okanland's legislative district with a $3 million budget hole It is troubling It's a problem Uh Kingsburg is you know again uh a school that has had some uh aid fluctuations over the last few years which is really hard on them Uh so we're going to we're going to try to fight that Mark that one area where Ocanlin and Murphy agree It's bad It's bad These are largely capital projects There's no state including New Jersey that can make up for either the cuts we've seen or the potential cuts And bracing for more cuts only deepens the concern felt across the board For NJ Spotlight News I'm Joanna Gagas