Roselle Public Schools Approves 2026-27 Budget; No Tax Hike

ROSELLE, NJ — The Roselle Board of Education approved the final 2026-2027 Roselle Public Schools Budget on April 27. The final budget includes roughly $88.6 million in expenditures, a 4.6% decrease from the current academic year.Dr. Melissa Simmons, interim business administrator, presented the budget through a presentation she deems ‘A Transparent Blueprint for Roselle’s Educational Future’.Simmons acknowledged efforts of the board members, Superintendent Dr. Nathan L. Fisher and the executive team to balance the budget, noting that other districts throughout the state are struggling to balance their budget and laying off staff.“One of the things that I always tell people is that the budget is about a vision and goals that we need to establish,” she said. “One of the things that we focused on was the vision for next year, what we are going to do.”Simmons emphasized equipping students with durable skills that include critical thinking, adaptability, collaboration and innovation and their ultimate metric: Every student, Every day, No exceptions.“Every time we think about things, we need to see and always talk about who are we serving,” she said. “And we can have a lot of names to that but at the end of the day we are serving students.”The budget plan retains current staffing levels, expands preschool programs, deploys STEAM initiatives and advanced technological integration, focuses on Student Achievement and Innovation by targeting Literacy and Math, and shifts to update facilities.And despite a 25% decrease in federal funding and escalations in fixed costs—including 21% health benefit hikes and a 15% special education cost increase—the Board of Education structured a budget that resulted in no change to the tax levy.“That $3 million [in state aid] significantly helped when it came to balancing our budget because we also had to consider what the community was also going through,” Simmons noted. During the public comments, Board Member Gisselle Bond had asked for further details on the plan with regard to expanding preschool and questioned where to place the growing numbers.“We have been having this discussion on spacing for a few months now. The expansion–most of it–is coming from the new lease that we are going to utilize,” Simmons answered. “We are going to open up two new classrooms in the new building that we leased. However, we do have a need to have some more Pre-K disabled classes.”There was no additional discussion on the presentation items, and the resolution to adopt the final budget was approved with eight votes in the affirmative and one absent vote.