JUST A WEEK AFTER the first day of class for the ten schools of the Westminster Plainsboro Regional School District, Superintendent David Aderhold is already trying to plan out the district’s budget for next year in the face of devastating budget cuts from the federal government. Aderhold, it seems, attempts to do so between a long school day and picking his daughter up from soccer practice. The district, less than a 20-minute drive from Princeton University’s campus, serves as a particularly large public school system in central New Jersey, encompassing both Middlesex and Mercer counties. 

 

Aderhold, who is entering his 13th year as superintendent for the district, oversees 9,000 students, 900 teachers, and 1,500 staff every day. As president of  Garden State Coalition of Schools, which encompasses 90 school districts, Aderhold also leads advocacy work in the West Windsor, Plainsboro, and Princeton public schools. He has served on two Governor task forces, and is now president elect of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators.

 

“I’ve been fortunate to be in the room where a lot of conversations have happened over the last decade,” Aderhold said. Now, as the district gears up to navigate massive funding cuts to his students’ health and education, he must lead many of those conversations himself.

 

FORMING THE CORE OF President Donald Trump’s second-term agenda, H.R.1 was passed by the 199th Congress and signed into law in July. A comprehensive budget reconciliation law, it introduces extensive changes to tax policy, health care, immigration, and environmental regulations. 

 

With the exception of colleges with fewer than 3,000 students, H.R.1 will enact higher tax rates on college endowments, pushing private universities to seriously cut budgets this fall. Princeton’s endowment tax will be 8% in the coming year.

 

The bill also significantly alters federal student loans, ending the Grad PLUS loan program for graduate students and setting a new lifetime borrowing limit for undergraduate and graduate loans at $257,500 per person.

 

Within the ivory walls of Princeton University, the conversations surrounding these budget cuts largely center on the immediate impacts felt among the students: reduced Frist Late Meal hours and layoffs for many student jobs. 

 

Looking beyond these walls, however, it is clear that some of the greatest burdens from the bill will fall on the students just down the road at Westminster Plainsboro Regional School District, and in the public elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the state.

 

THOUGH THE BILL IMPACTS public school systems across the country, New Jersey’s upcoming gubernatorial election creates greater uncertainty about the implementation of the bill in the state: the next governor of New Jersey will have a say over how many of the bill’s policies will go into effect. 

 

As Superintendent Aderhold said, “November’s election could change a lot of things.”

 

While many of the outlined policies have yet to be fully implemented, changes in Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Title I, and more pose serious threats to the success and longevity of public school systems and the children within them.

 

WITH AROUND A THIRD OF New Jersey’s child population currently enrolled in the state’s Medicaid program, federal cuts outlined by H.R.1 could strip many of their health coverage, impacting children within and outside the school system as access to regular check-ups, immunizations, and other health services become more difficult to afford. The bill — which will go into effect after the 2026 midterm elections — will cut federal funding by around $1 trillion over the next 10 years, shifting costs to the states and introducing new work requirements and more frequent eligibility determinations. 

 

NJ FamilyCare, through which individual children and families qualify for medical insurance through Medicaid, offers comprehensive health coverage, encompassing doctor visits, hospital services, and prescriptions, depending on the recipient’s eligibility category. However, now that the state is predicted to lose approximately $3.6 billion in annual federal Medicaid funding, about 20% (350,000) of current NJ FamilyCare enrollees are projected to lose their health coverage.

 

Princeton Professor Heather Howard says a major part of Medicaid’s value for the state’s children comes even before they show up to school. Howard is also co-director of the Global Health Program and previous New Jersey Commissioner of Health and Senior Services.

“Medicaid is vital to kids’ health and to kids’ readiness for school,” she said. “Undermining this sort of foundation that Medicaid provides for kids’ school readiness is really concerning.”

 

The ability of children to access the services provided by NJ FamilyCare is essential for preparing them for the school year, ensuring children’s health before they enter the classroom. Come next October, however, children whose families rely on NJ FamilyCare could be entering the school year without their regular check-ups or vaccinations.

 

Regarding the bill’s cuts to Medicaid, Howard said, “I don’t know that it’s going to lead to a closure of a hospital in Mercer County, but generally, less money for hospitals means less outreach, less programming, and less money for the federally qualified health centers in the county.”

 

Beyond preparedness for schools, though, the Medicaid cuts may have more direct impacts on the school districts themselves. Across the nation, Medicaid is the fourth-largest federal funding source for K-12 schools, supporting over $7.5 billion of school-based health services every year.

 

When a student qualifies for Medicaid, their school district can bill the program for the services they need during the school day. Aderhold, the Superintendent of Westminster Plainsboro Regional School District – who oversees around 9,000 students, 900 teachers, and 1,500 staff – emphasized the importance of health care costs as a funding source of the district. With less funding from Medicaid helping hospitals and health care systems offset lost revenue, Aderhold said, “you’re going to see exorbitant health care costs.”

 

The district uses a School Health Insurance Fund, which now has gaps. Aderhold explained that his budget for health care “went up by $4 million,” and his “ability to raise taxes went up by 3.6 million.” Aderhold already had a $400,000 deficit before putting any money elsewhere in the district. 

 

Now, he said, their School Health Insurance Funds have increased around 14%, seven times their state allowance, which sits at a 2% increase. This means a substantial rise in the cost of providing health coverage for school employees, with states unable to make up for such drastic Medicaid cuts. Thus, there becomes a greater likelihood that many public school districts will cover less of the premium costs for their educators and staff, shifting more of that burden onto the employees and their families.

 

Julie Borst, who serves as Executive Director of Save Our Schools NJ Community Organizing and works on child education and family policy advocacy, emphasized the impacts of cuts to the Special Education Medicaid Initiative (SEMI), which is a Medicaid reimbursement for services in schools, like occupational, physical, and speech therapy.

 

“With Medicaid being chopped to the way it’s going to be, we’re going to feel this,” she said. “It’s going to be felt all over, and I would say probably most especially in the specialized schools for kids with disabilities.”

 

H.R.1 ALSO SHIFTS THE ELIGIBILITY requirements and funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). States must now contribute to the cost of SNAP benefits for the first time and can respond by limiting enrollment, modifying benefits, or even withdrawing from the program.

 

Because children in SNAP-participating households are automatically considered eligible for the free school breakfast and lunch programs, these new requirements could hinder access to meals. 

 

As Howard described, “We know that if the family is under a greater risk of food insecurity, clearly it will impact the kids. These are wraparound services, and they’re all interconnected.”

 

Peter Chen, a Senior Policy Analyst at New Jersey Policy Perspective, noted how the state will have to include “much more onerous requirements for applying to SNAP. “The administrative burden of simply completing all the forms is enough to drive many people off of the program,” he said.

 

The Wildwood Public School District, the only urban school district located in Cape May, serves a roughly 75% non-white population, with around 63% of the students identifying as Hispanic or Latino. According to Superintendent John Kummings, who has served in the position for 12 years, the district’s free and reduced lunch rate consistently falls between 80%-90%. Because enough students qualify for free and reduced lunch individually, the district qualifies for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), meaning all students are given free breakfast and lunch daily.

 

But the potential upcoming decrease in SNAP participation could make the district ineligible for CEP and thus no longer be able to offer universal free meals. Kummings said, “It’ll then become an economic issue for the school district, because we can’t subsidize breakfast and lunch.”

 

“We’re still waiting for things to kind of pan out and get some guidance,” Kummings added. But, he does know these cuts could have an “almost global impact for our local population.” 

 

HOW MANY OF THE H.R.1 POLICIES will be implemented is yet to be seen in New Jersey, as the state prepares to elect a new governor. One of the main questions the state’s next governor will have to determine is whether or not to implement the outlined federal education scholarship tax credit program, which provides a tax incentive for donations to nonprofit Scholarship Granting Organizations. 

 

According to Chen, however, these tax credit programs are essentially school voucher programs, which provide scholarships to send eligible students to attend private or religious schools instead of public schools. Because voucher programs lack a lot of public support, he said, positioning the program as a tax credit serves as a workaround. “The harmful effects are seen in reducing the amount of state funds that are available to fund public schools properly,” he said.

 

Executive Director of the Paterson Education Fund Rosie Grant voiced her opposition to this outlined tax credit. Grant, who works on community engagement and advocacy in the Paterson public school system, also runs after-school programs throughout the year that have now lost funding. “I’m not against choice, but I am against pulling money away from educating all kids and using it to educate some kids,” she said.

 

Borst also emphasized that these scholarships rarely cover the full cost of a private school tuition. She said, “This idea that this is the high-minded thing of ‘we’re helping poor children go to private school because they’re going to get a better education,’ is nonsense. It never covers the tuition.”

 

Still, it remains unclear whether this program will actually be implemented in New Jersey. Gubernatorial Democratic candidate Mikie Sherrill has voiced her opposition to school voucher programs, while Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli has placed charter school growth at the forefront of his education platform, using Florida’s school voucher program as a model.

 

As Borst argues, New Jersey already sees hundreds of millions of dollars come out of the public school system in order to pay for parallel systems as this tax credit program would create. “We should not be doing that, because those parallel systems are not educating everybody,” she said. “The purpose of public school is to educate everybody.”

 

ALREADY-STRUGGLING PUBLIC SCHOOL systems will now face even tighter budgets, forced to navigate fewer teachers, larger class sizes, and more.

 

Kummings reflected on the current status and future of the Wildwood Public School District with the impending cuts. Having already made staff cuts last year, Kummings said the budget will only become tighter. “We’re already approaching the skeleton crew and are in survival mode,” he said. “So how you’re going to educate kids fairly and equitably is kind of a mystery if we’re going to experience those levels of cuts.”

 

Outside of the regular school day, after-school programs face some of the most devastating cuts, many of which have already been shuttered for the current school year. According to Grant, The Patterson Education Fund has consistently run after-school programs in the district, which for the past five years have been funded by the 21st Century grant, a federally-funded program for after-school activities. 

 

The state of New Jersey has previously received $11 million for the 21st Century. Now, Grant says, the funding for this year has dropped to $4 million, forcing the organization to stop their after-school programs. Now, she said, “These 200 kids have nowhere to go after school.”

 

Likewise, a 21st century grant funds all of the after-school and summer programs for grades 3 through 12 in the Wildwood Public School District. Along with the fact that these programs provide dinner to the students, Kummings said, “There’s a lot of enrichment that happens within those programs. It keeps students out of trouble. A lot of them don’t have a lot of resources in the home, so they’re able to use school resources and complete projects, homework, etc.” 

 

Now, as the district is forced to reshape their budget for the next year, Kummings said, “We’re not going to find half a million dollars a year to run those programs.” 

 

Though each respective school board doesn’t vote on the budgets for the 2026-2027 academic year until March, school districts are beginning conversations about what that budget will look like now. The challenges districts will face under such extreme cuts are at the forefront of Aderhold’s mind as he looks to build the budget for the Westminster Plainsboro Regional School District. “Schools and states are going to have a real reckoning when it comes to finances for the way we build our budgets,” he said. “I’ve been building budgets for 17 years. I don’t have a solution either.”

 

While individual districts look for solutions in regards to these cuts, states like New Jersey must also aim to make up for lost federal funding. In regards to health insurance, Chen argued, “The focus should still be on trying to expand coverage, and the state will have to have put complete resources, state resources, to help fill in where the feds have left off.” 

 

But many think it may be impossible for states to fill this gap. “I think the money is too big,” Borst said.

 

“The feature and the bug of federalism is that these are partnerships between the state government and federal government,” Howard said. “States have built in constraints because they have to balance their budget, so they just cannot make up the money like the federal government can.”

 

But Chen hopes states like New Jersey will look to more innovative solutions in the face of these cuts, such as raising taxes for those who can afford it. “I’m hoping some of the traumatic and horrible changes that will be wrought by H.R.1, especially as time passes, will galvanize folks to think differently about family affordability and what society owes each other,” he said.

 

Likewise, Grant hopes the coming months and years can be a time of rallying around public schools as community hubs as rising above the party politics. “It is our responsibility to hold the people we love accountable, in any relationship,” she said. “And so that’s what I’m asking. Rise above the blind love for the person, and let’s talk about how we hold our leaders accountable and how to fight for our children.”