EDITORIAL
With many school board races uncontested this year, the main question before voters in many school district elections Tuesday was whether to approve the budget and, presented with reasonable budget packages, some including a tax decrease many did.
In recent years it has been progressively more difficult to get a school budget passed, as the cost of fuel has doubled, insurance costs steadily increase and student populations expand slowly in some districts, but with alarming rapidity in others. Couple this with almost no additional aid from the state in the past four years and district after district finds itself leaving vacancies open, eliminating teachers and programs and cutting corners so they won’t have to ask voters for too much money when April rolls around.
Locally, voters supported the school budgets in the Bordentown Regional, Chesterfield, New Hanover, North Hanover and Springfield school districts this year, giving the nod to several that promise a lower tax rate (most of the Bordentown Regional district, and Chesterfield, will see a small tax decrease) but also approving increases in others. Voters, realizing that some small increases cannot be avoided without gutting school programs, appear confident that the school boards did what they could to keep the costs to a minimum.
It is more surprising that the Mansfield school budget failed by a wide margin, considering that it proposed a tax decrease. Mansfield voters also voted down the Northern Burlington regional budget, as Mansfield was the only one of the four sending municipalities that would see a tax hike under that budget.
Voting down higher taxes makes sense in a municipality where the local purpose tax more than doubled last year, but the Mansfield elementary district will be hard pressed to find more corners to cut when it is already proposing a lower tax rate.
The problem of putting school district budgets up to vote often comes down to this: if the other taxes in the municipality are high, the school budget becomes a place for voters to express their displeasure.
That makes it all the more important for voters to understand the tax impact of the budget they are voting on. Since it is not spelled out on the ballot, voters should take the time before they go out to vote, to interpret those numbers and decide if they are voting against a budget merely for the sake of voting something down.
As long as school budgets continue to be put on the chopping block in New Jersey, we will continue to have to realistically decide what we as taxpayers can afford and what our school districts can afford to lose.