Officials with the nation’s oldest and largest environmental education center say if they don’t receive more funding than Gov. Phil Murphy has proposed for the coming New Jersey state budget, they’ll need to “severely cut” their educational offerings — including ending aid to underserved students who visit from around the state.

Since 1949, the School of Conservation, tucked inside Sussex County’s Stokes Forest, has provided environmental education to visiting students from across the Garden State. But the center’s leaders say Murphy’s plan to cut 60% of their funding in the coming fiscal year would compromise that mission, and their particular focus on giving urban kids a taste of the bucolic natural surroundings usually absent from their day-to-day lives. Murphy’s office declined comment on the reason for the cuts, but they come as New Jersey faces a challenging fiscal environment, with anticipated revenues for the coming fiscal year already lagging behind the governor’s proposed budget.

Administrators have submitted a $3 million request to the state for funding, up from the $2 million included in the 2023-2024 fiscal year budget. But Murphy’s $55.9 billion budget proposal only includes $800,000 for the school in 2024-2025. School officials say they’ve also recently started receiving donations from about 200 people, ranging from $20 to $100 a month, and have more than $100,000 in program-specific grants. But they say that it isn’t nearly enough to continue operations at their current level without more state support.

Lawmakers and Murphy have until the end of June to agree on a final budget.

For the school, not receiving additional funding would mean hard choices, according to its director, Kerry Kirk Pflugh. That would include abandoning necessary repairs to the school’s nearly century-old facilities, built during the Roosevelt administration, when the site was a civilian conservation camp. Some of the facilities need roof and plumbing replacements, she said. And it would mean significantly cutting back on how many students the school, which receives up to 10,000 student visitors annually, could serve.

“We would also have to curtail what we can offer in the way of overnight programs, because that requires a food service being provided to school groups … and we would really have to examine what kind of education programs we could offer. We would have to cut back on the number of staff. ” she said.

Two Democrats in the state Senate — John McKeon and Bob Smith – have submitted resolutions to add $2.2 million to Murphy’s proposal for funding for the school, which marked its 75th anniversary this month. But officials from the state Treasury and Office of Legislative Services are cautioning that Murphy’s proposal already spends more than the revenue the state is projected to bring for the coming fiscal year. And McKeon said while he’s optimistic, he understands the state “has to tighten their belt somewhere.”

A ‘magical’ learning experience

During the school year and summer, New Jersey students flock to the education center either just for the day or for multiple day overnight trips arranged by their regular schools, usually at a cost ranging from $30 to $170 per person but often subsidized by aid the center provides to school groups from lower-income communities.

“We do try to provide some scholarships, so that would have to stop [in the event of budget cuts],” Pflugh said.

While on site, Pflugh and the school’s staff provide a range of hands-on classes on topics such as aquatic biology and water ecology, where students will go and observe the property’s lakes and streams and learn about the wildlife that reveal the health of the waterway.

The students also have the opportunity to try their hands at candle-making, cook up some johnny cakes on a 19th century stove, and forge metal using the tools of early settlers to create plant hangers and bird houses.

“Basically, they learn what the people in the early colonial period needed to do to survive on a day-to-day experience,” Pflugh said.

Pflugh said the experience is “actually very magical” for the kids who come from urban settings with very little nature around.

“There may be a little bit of apprehension when they first arrive. But my goodness, within an hour of their arrival, there’s laughter, there’s joy, there’s revelations about their place in the world and how they can make a difference,” she said.

McKeon, one of the state senators, said when he first toured the school three years ago he found it inspiring, and since then has met many people whose lives were affected by it.

“You’ll hear stories from people that took a career path in environmental science … just based upon that weekend visit,” he said.

McKeon said he was also struck by the amount of work needed to repair the facilities, recalling that some of the walking bridges used to cross waterways had completely fallen down.

A ‘magical’ learning experience

In recent years, the school has faced a total upheaval over how it’s run. In 1981, the state Legislature put the then-Montclair State College (now a university) in charge of the School of Conservation. But in 2020, Montclair closed the school and turned the facility back to the state amid massive financial losses the university suffered in the pandemic.

A nonprofit support organization, the Friends of the New Jersey School of Conservation, then worked with the state to become temporary operators of the school and partially reopen it in 2021, offering day programs outside. The following year, Murphy signed legislation that made the Friends group the legal managers of the school, and the group signed a 20-year lease with the Department of Environmental Protection. By 2023, the school was back to hosting students for overnight programs.

Pflugh said that as a “state asset” school leaders are hopeful that the officials working on the budget will “see the importance of the work that’s happening [at the school] and its value.”

McKeon said he’ll be working behind the scenes this month to get his colleagues’ support.

“I would imagine I can get a lot of my colleagues to weigh in as it being something that they would think would be worthwhile,” he said.

If that happens, McKeon has another suggestion for a project at the school.

“I want to name a trail after me at some point in time. So everybody could continue to walk all over me,” he said.

He added that he’s willing to pay for his trail’s nameplate.