Sad showing: Time to reform school election.
Last week’s school district votes and defeat of the budget should be looked at as more on an indicator on the state of New Jersey than local views on the schools district.
According to the New Jersey School Boards Association, voters approved only 53.4 percent of the budgets submitted by 549 public school districts across the state. That’s the lowest level of approval in 12 years, and represents a precipitous drop from 2005, when 70.7 percent of the budgets were approved, and 2004, when the approval rate was 69.8 percent.
Even more distressing than the outcome of these elections was the turnout. While voter apathy has been evident in federal and state elections in recent years, nothing comes remotely close to the dismal 15.7 percent turnout reported last Tuesday. Manville fared better than most and better than average but still left the fate of the schools in the hands of about one out of five registered voters.
But that’s for an election that chose more than 1,000 members of local boards of education and decided the fate of more than $10.5 billion in local spending.
These numbers barely scratch the surface of what’s wrong with our present system of electing school board members and deciding school budgets on a random Tuesday in the middle of April. While somewhere between eight and nine out of every 10 voters stay home, a tiny fraction of the electorate chooses the people who will oversee and set policy for our local public schools, and decides how much they are permitted to spend over the next year.
The people who do bother to show up at the polls generally fall into two camps. On one side are the parents, teachers and other supporters of the schools who organize low-key but carefully targeted get-out-the-vote campaigns for the budget. On the other side are homeowners, especially those on fixed incomes, who are upset about rising property taxes and find in this election the only direct outlet for their frustration. Since the public does not vote directly on federal, state, county or municipal budgets, the school budget which accounts in some New Jersey districts for as much as 75 percent of local property taxes is the most convenient target for taxpayer anger.
So any time property taxes are rising faster than the average homeowner’s ability to pay them, or whenever the economy is generally not in great shape, it’s reflected in the vote on the school budget. This year, with Gov. Corzine trying desperately to close a $4 billion budget deficit, with state aid to local school districts remaining flat for the fifth consecutive year, with transportation and energy costs going through the roof, and with property taxes rising commensurately, it’s little wonder the approval rate for local school budgets dropped by 17 percent.
And yet, when all is said and done, this whole exercise is more symbolic than substantive. Whenever a local school budget is defeated, it goes to the municipal governing body for review. The municipality can leave it as it is, or make cuts. The school board may then appeal any cuts to the state commissioner of education. In practice, however, this rarely happens because municipalities rarely make more than token cuts in the school budget, even if it has been defeated decisively by the voters. Last year, for example, the Montgomery Township Committee took only a nominal amount out of the school district’s budget after it was rejected by a 2-to-1 margin.
There’s got to be a better way. Eliminating the direct vote on school budgets would be a good start, allowing public education to shed its role as scapegoat for anti-tax sentiment. Electing school board members in November rather than April would be another positive step, saving money by consolidating two elections into one and increasing voter participation in school board races at the same time. In the wake of last week’s sad showing, these reforms deserve serious and immediate consideration.