More state aid demands top Lakewood school board race

LAKEWOOD – More state aid for the debt-ridden Lakewood Schools tops the list of issues in this year’s Board of Education race, which has drawn the first contested election in almost a decade.

For the first time since 2014, each seat up for grabs on the governing body is being challenged as seven candidates seek votes in the non-partisan race, including four challengers.

The increased interest comes as the school district faces its most serious fiscal issues in years, with more than $123 million in state loan debt, a long-running lawsuit over state funding and the ongoing impact of the pandemic and so-called “lost learning.”

More: Lakewood schools borrowed millions from New Jersey and still can't pay its bills

“There is money out there that we are not getting, we are not taking advantage of it,” said Eli Eisenbach, one of three challengers running under the slogan, “Fixing the Formula,” a reference to the state aid formula that many feel is short-changing Lakewood. “The loans are going to end up to who knows where? It leaves a big hole.”

Eisenbach’s running mates include Avrohom Shubert and Yoni Morgenstern. The fourth challenger is Yehuda Shain, whose slogan is “Accountability and Transparency.”

Schubert called Lakewood’s ongoing debt “unsustainable,” adding “the current trajectory is broken.”

The incumbents facing re-election are Ada Gonzalez, Moshe Raitzik, and Eliyahu Greenwald.

Asked to give his top priority, Raitzik said via email, “getting the state to change the funding formula so that every child in Lakewood, no matter what schools they attend, should be counted equally.”

Gonzalez, Greenwald and Morgenstern did not respond to requests for comment.

The larger field is unusual in Lakewood, which has not had a contested race for each seat since 2014, when seven candidates ran for three seats.

Since then, three candidates ran unopposed four times — from 2018 to 2021 — and four candidates ran for three seats in 2015, 2016 and 2022.

More: Lakewood Schools borrow more money from New Jersey than any other district

A larger electorate may well be part of the reason for the increased pool of candidates. Lakewood’s exploding population, which grew from 92,843 in 2010 to 135,138 in 2020, makes it the fastest growing city in New Jersey. It is the fourth most-populated municipality after Newark, Jersey City, and Paterson.

But the school district has also suffered from a slew of fiscal issues, ranging from stagnant state funding to the growing loan debt and rising costs that have affected all districts.

More: Lakewood schools attorney made $5M in six years as district financial woes deepened

State education officials in May announced a new review of Lakewood Schools finances after an appeals court ordered that the Department of Education improve state funding for the district.

The appeals court decision relates to the nine-year-old Alcantara case, a lawsuit filed by Tractenberg and attorney Arthur Lang, a Lakewood High School teacher. Their complaint challenged the state’s funding of the 5,000-student district, claiming the district’s legal obligation to provide transportation and other services to more than 40,000 nonpublic school students required more state aid.

In the decision handed down March 6, the three-person appellate court declared that Allen-McMillan must review the district’s situation and come up with a way to improve its funding. But it did not include a deadline or a more detailed requirement for how to proceed.

Meanwhile, Lakewood Schools loan debt has grown to more than $123 million, with a recent request for another $93 million.

The loans date back to the 2014-15 school year when the district borrowed $4.5 million. Since then, school officials have also received $5.6 million in 2016-17; $8.5 million in 2017-18; $28.1 million in 2018-19; $36 million in 2019-20; $54.5 million in 2020-2021; and $24 million in 2022-23.

Joe Strupp is an award-winning journalist with 30 years’ experience who covers education and several local communities for APP.com and the Asbury Park Press. He is also the author of three books, including Killing Journalism on the state of the news media, and an adjunct media professor at Rutgers University and Fairleigh Dickinson University. Reach him at jstrupp@gannettnj.com and at 732-413-3840. Follow him on Twitter at @joestrupp

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Lakewood hosts first contested school board race in a decade