The frustration can be heard in the voices of local school board members and administrators who believe state legislators are pulling in the reins — to the detriment of students — on the amount of money they are permitted to spend on education each year.
The frustration can most definitely be heard in the voices of the small but persistent band of citizens who attend meetings and beg school board members to stop what the citizens believe is runaway spending.
The words of New Jersey’s residents can be read in newspapers from around the state on a daily basis, and those who write are saying pretty much the same thing: they are fed up with the way schools are funded in New Jersey. Fueled primarily by school spending, Garden State property taxes have skyrocketed to the point where some residents say they are being forced to sell their homes and move out of state.
One resident of a local community recently told the members of his school board that they cannot keep raising property taxes forever.
Guess what? Those board members can do that and will do that if the laws governing how education is funded in New Jersey are not changed.
A very small number of New Jersey residents will head to the voting booths on April 19 to participate in the annual school board election. In addition to voting for members of their local school board, they will vote on budgets that have been proposed for the 2005-06 school year.
Some lucky residents will be asked to vote on a budget that would reduce the amount of school taxes they pay, but many will be asked to approve an increase in what they pay to support the operation of local schools.
Asking residents to vote themselves a tax increase — in many cases a tax increase that amounts to hundreds of dollars — hardly seems like the best way to also ask people to support education. It only makes it worse when they’re asked the same question year after year.
The residents of New Jersey are reaching a critical point when it comes to property taxes. To this point their frustration has been largely ignored by those with the power to change things — the politicians have gotten the message, but they are not yet motivated enough to do anything about it.
It is patently unfair for residents of the majority of New Jersey’s school districts to watch millions of taxpayer dollars go to the state’s neediest districts — the 31 so-called Abbott districts — while they must pay the freight of higher property taxes because state officials have frozen their aid levels.
In a state that is facing a $4 billion budget shortfall, it seems pointless to continue stating the obvious — that there is no more money in the school aid pot.
The state Legislature must call a special session that would be dedicated to finding a new way to fund education. The present method is not working, and it is breaking the back of New Jersey’s residents.
The time has come to go back to square one and figure out a better way to do it. Residents deserve nothing less than the Legislature’s best effort to address New Jersey’s No. 1 issue.