West Windsor-Plainsboro board adopts 2025–26 budget, adds contingency for potential federal funding cuts

The West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District Board of Education on April 29 adopted its 2025–26 budget, approving a total local tax-levy increase of 5.223% that includes a $1.225 million contingency intended to shield student programs if federal education funding is cut or delayed.

Superintendent Dr. David Aderhold, who presented the budget, said the district is “a people business” and stressed that salary and benefits remain the largest budget drivers. He told the board the district faces a $4.7 million projected increase in health-care costs and that the state’s 2% tax-levy cap (plus available allowances) limits how much the district can raise locally without using spending-growth adjustments.

The contingency is part of the difference between the district’s base 2% cap allowance and the full 5.223% levy increase approved by the board. “We’ve recommended building in 1.225 of the 5.223 to be essentially a fund to protect the district should we lose federal aid,” Aderhold said, adding the board would decide later whether any unused contingency should be returned to taxpayers or moved to reserves.

Why it matters: the contingency is aimed at protecting services for students who rely on federal programs and grants — including Title I–IV grants, IDEA (special education), Medicaid reimbursement for school-related services, and the National School Lunch Program — amid legal and policy uncertainty at the federal level. Aderhold said the district budgets roughly $3 million in federal title grants and that a 90% reduction in Medicaid…