Another New Jersey school is being forced to close due to budget issues the district says come from a lack of state funding.

Parents in Jefferson Township were notified this week that the Cozy Lake Elementary School will close at the end of this school year. The district office building will also be sold.

“This is our third building that we're going to be closing in the district,” said Superintendent Jeanne Howe. “We just don't have the money to keep it open.”

Jefferson School District officials say the state’s funding formula, “S2,” has lost the district $45 million in aid since 2018. They now face a $3 million shortfall.

Additionally, the 2004 Highlands Act limits how much the township can build, leading to an enrollment drop.

“Our enrollment declined 29%, yet our state aid cut is closer to 60%,” Howe said. “It would make sense if those numbers were proportional, and they're not.”

“S2” aims to redistribute aid from overfunded districts to the underfunded. But it comes at a cost.

“We certainly did not consider ourselves to be overfunded,” Howe said. “We cut teaching positions, support staff, secretarial positions, we cut positions administratively. So, we've been trying to right-size all along.”

The state did offer the chance for municipalities to increase the tax levy up to 9.9% - nearly five times what’s usually allowed.

“The Board of Education did not want to do that, because it's placing the entire burden on the taxpayers of Jefferson, where the taxes are already quite high,” Howe said.

Moving the roughly 200 students from Cozy Lake will force the entire district to reconfigure.

“Although the fourth grade is moving to the middle school, they're still very much elementary-age children and will continue to have an elementary school experience,” Howe said. “We are taking all of our students into consideration during this time period.”

Jefferson isn’t the only district facing this issue.

Jackson Township has also had to close an elementary school, and the Freehold Regional, Howell and Toms River districts all approved high tax levy increases to face their deficit.

Gov. Phil Murphy has previously said on News12’s “Ask Gov. Murphy” program that the formula may be re-assessed.