Superintendent Ruth B. Turner and Interim Business Administrator Dana Sullivan presented the Montclair Public Schools’ budget for the 2026-2027 academic year on Wednesday, April 29. The budget includes the reduction of four high school teachers, a district nurse, a district school resource officer, two district custodians and two district secretaries.
The cuts are tied to the ongoing gap between district revenue and expenditures and are partially dictated by the outcome of last month’s special election, which asked Montclair residents to vote on raising the tax yield.
In a close vote from the March 11 special election, the verdict ended in a yes-no for school budget taxes, but what does that mean for the students, teachers and residents of Montclair going into next year?
As a result of the Montclair Public Schools $17.6 million deficit, some level of tax burden had to be borne by Montclair’s residents. Out of the four options, the election ended in a yes-no victory. What this means is a yes for a one-time $1,117 tax payment and a no on the permanent $443 tax payment over the next several years.
While the one-time homeowners’ payment raised $12.6 million for the budget, $5 million of that debt remains a problem. Students and educators are left to contemplate what that might mean for the next academic year.
First, the superintendent will need to make cuts to programs at MHS. These will likely include freshman athletic sports and clubs, cutbacks on sports transportation services, loss of a world language course, class size minimums, cuts to teachers or teachers switching to other subjects for which they hold certificates.
But students have already noticed some of these changes.
“Normally, they give the MHS Robotics Team somewhere around $40,000 every year, now we have almost no funding at all. We were luckily able to get donations to keep us stable, but that’s not going to happen every year,” MHS Robotics Team member Ben Litman said.
For many at Montclair High, the frustration isn’t just about the budget itself but about what could be lost moving forward. With Wednesday’s outline of specific cuts and changes, students and staff are beginning to receive clearer answers and have started navigating new fundraising efforts in response.
“With the cutback on funding our team has been getting, we have been doing fundraising of our own. Recently our coaches gave us an assignment of going around to businesses in town and seeing if they could help give us any donations,” MHS football player Lamont Luks said. “Nearly the whole team is participating in this.”
Many students at Montclair High School have already grown increasingly frustrated and also worried with these new budget cuts.
“In my freshmen year I decided to take Latin as an interesting language. Turns out it was a great choice,” Montclair High student Jaden Chonn said. “But with how small the class is, there is a pretty good chance that it won’t be my language next year, and I hate that. I just wish the school could keep it together.”
In the end, the impact of these decisions will be felt most in the day-to-day experiences of students and teachers. As changes begin to take effect, uncertainty remains about what programs will stay, what will be cut and how the school community will adjust.
